It is only when attention is directed to this interesting science by the wide publicity given to some great case in which handwriting plays an important part that the notice of the general public is drawn to it.  The average person would be surprised to know of the great number of cases that find their way to the office of the handwriting expert.  The man who has made a success in this line is constantly in demand, and makes frequent trips to distant points to appear as witness in courts.

Though nearly every large town has some one who devotes some attention to handwriting, there are but five or six men in this country who give to it practically all of their time, and who have gone very deeply into the subject.

To allow any person to qualify as an “expert” and to testify as such is a matter wholly within the discretion of the court.  Unfortunately, courts frequently are lax in determining this question.  Almost any one who can write is permitted to give alleged “expert” testimony regarding handwriting.  In one well-known case, a case, too, involving life and death—­the court unwittingly accepted the “expert” testimony of a witness who, it was afterward proven, was unable to write even so much as his own name.  In the litigation attending the disposal of large mining interests held at Butte, Montana, the court permitted testimony in regard to the handwriting of the testator from a witness who admitted that he had seen the testator write but once, and that in lead pencil over twenty years before.

Any one accustomed to writing is usually allowed to qualify as an “expert.”  To the lay mind it is natural to confound experts who have studied the subject deeply in all its various phases with those who have had occasion to examine it casually, or who may possess uncommon facility with the pen without ever having had occasion to investigate scientifically just those little illusive points upon which the professional expert places his reliance.

Hence, when we read of “experts” being mistaken, or of an equal number of them appearing on opposite sides of the same case, it will nearly always be found upon investigation that they are of the class described above, whose lack of thorough special training and specialized experience really should have disqualified them from giving testimony.  Though any one may call himself an “expert,” or a “professional expert,” for that matter, thus opening the door to charlatanism in exactly the same manner that it is opened more or less in all vocations, yet, as a matter of fact, it is very rare that professional handwriting experts testify to a contrary state of facts, and the cases in which they have been proven mistaken are remarkably few.

Experts who have a natural aptitude coupled with experience that produces skill are able, by a system which they have reduced to a science, to detect the spurious from the genuine handwriting with almost unvarying success.  But their conclusions are not reached by second sight or sleight-of-hand methods, but rather by painstaking, scientific investigation.