A very interesting case was involved in the will of Miser Paine in New York in 1889.  Here a deliberate attempt to get away with something like $1,500,000 was made, which was frustrated by a handwriting expert.  When quite a young man, James H. Paine was a clerk in a Boston business house.  He absconded with a lot of money and went to New York, where all trace of him was lost.  He speculated with the stolen money, and everything he touched turned to gold.  He soon became a millionaire.  Then he became a miser.  He went around the streets in rags, lodged in a garret with a French family on the West Side, who took him out of pure charity, and lived on the leavings which restaurant-keepers gave him.  There was only one thing that he would spend money on; that was music.  He was passionately fond of music, and for years was a familiar figure in the lobby of the Academy of Music during the opera season.  He would go there early in the evening, and beg people to pay his way in.  If he didn’t find a philanthropist he would buy a ticket himself, but he never gave up hope until he knew that the curtain had risen.

Finally Paine was run over by a cab in New York.  He was taken to a hospital, but made such a fuss about staying there that he was finally removed to his garret home.  He died there in a few days.  Then a man came forward with a power of attorney which he said Paine gave him in 1885 and which authorized him to take charge of Paine’s interest in the estate of his brother, Robert Treat Paine.  The closing paragraph empowered him to attend to all of Paine’s business and to dispose of his property without consulting anybody, in the event of anything happening to him.  Nothing was known then of Paine’s possessions.  Later the French family with whom Paine lived opened an old hair trunk they found in the garret.  In this trunk they found nearly half a million dollars in gold, bank notes, and securities.  Chickering, the piano man, came forward then and said that some years before Paine gave him a package wrapped up in an old bandana handkerchief for safe keeping.  He had opened this package and found that it contained $300,000 in bank notes.  Other possessions of Paine’s were found.  Relatives came forward and employing handwriting experts proved that the power of attorney presented was a forgery and the estate went to the relations of Paine.  This was a celebrated case in its day and called attention to the value of experts in this line.

Ovid, in his “Art of Love,” teaches young women to deceive their guardians by writing their love letters with new milk, and to make the writing appear by rubbing coal dust over the paper.  Any thick and viscous fluid, such as the glutinous and colorless juices of plants, aided by any colored powder, will answer the purpose equally well.  A quill pen should be used.