Upright

“ The sole question about which we have to concern ourselves is "Which is the best? What or which is the better or best System and Style of writing? Are the down strokes to be Upright or Sloping? Shall we have Vertical or Oblique writing? If the latter what degree of slope is the best, what shall be the standard angle?" ”

“ No teacher need have the slightest hesitation in introducing and adopting the Upright Style and Posture. Even without a knowledge of the principles of the system, it can advantageously be employed in classes and schools with the assurance of satisfactory and superior results. ”

“ They inflate themselves with pride and throw chests when they contemplate the Abyss from which they have escaped, and they thank God that they are not as other men. And lo! down upon them comes Johnny Upright and the monster city at his heels. Tenements spring up like magic, gardens are built upon, villas are divided and subdivided into many dwellings, and the black night of London settles down in a greasy pall. ”

“ But if, in this erect position, the head is kept upright above the shoulders, as when we stand on the ground, the immersion will, by the weight of that part of the head that is out of water, reach above the mouth and nostrils, perhaps a little above the eyes, so that a man cannot long remain suspended in water with his head in that position. ”

“ Mysterious and incapable of explanation are the phenomenon and the fact that no recorded serious attempt has ever been made to revive the discarded and forgotten Vertical Style until about seven years ago, when the first Series of Headline Copy Books in Upright Penmanship appeared, as the pioneer of a movement that has grown to most gratifying proportions. ”

“ There is no doubt whatever that all classes of the community are recognising the claims of Upright Penmanship more widely every day, and that the lethargy of the past is quickly disappearing and giving way to an interest which occasionally rises to excitement. ”

“ As they dash past us, we see that each man is seated on a round log about five feet long; some of them sit upright with their legs on the log, displaying the soles of their feet, keeping the equilibrium with their hands. ”

“ I shall not give you the address of Johnny Upright. Let it suffice that he lives on the most respectable street in the East End—a street that would be considered very mean in America, but a veritable oasis in the desert of East London. It is surrounded on every side by close-packed squalor and streets jammed by a young and vile and dirty generation; but its own pavements are comparatively bare of the children who have no other place to play, while it has an air of desertion, so few are the people that come and go. ”

“ As it thus gets higher and higher it has to be supported laterally, in order to keep it in an upright position, and for this reason strong props or shores are placed along the sides at frequent intervals. ”

“ That, as the Hygienic advantages of Vertical Writing have been clearly demonstrated and established both by Medical investigation and practical experiment and that as by its adoption the injurious postures so productive of spinal curvature and short sight are to a very great extent avoided, it is hereby recommended that Upright Penmanship he introduced and generally taught in our elementary and secondary schools. ”

“ Now unless it can be shown that ten units of work require no more time to execute or perform than six units of the same work it is obvious that Upright Penmanship must be more rapid than oblique. It is not needful to say that six miles can be much more speedily covered than ten miles, and six inches than ten inches. ”

“ The position of the head is affected in an obvious degree by the direction of the lines of writing and since these run parallel to the edge of the desk in Vertical Writing the necessity of turning the head to the left is done away with for the child who writes upright whereas the oblique writer is, to some extent, compelled to turn his head owing to the lines ascending towards the right. ”

“ The twisted and curved position of the spine caused by writing is doubtless a very potent factor in the production of Lateral Curvature. The more slanting the writing the worse the position, and I would strongly advise that upright writing be universally substituted for the slanting (p. 73) .
The posture necessitated by ordinary writing is probably that which causes more harm to the spine than any other, but the system of upright writing so ably advocated by Mr. ”

“ Whilst teachers unanimously declare that vertical writing disposes finally and satisfactorily of the painful postures that have in the Sloping writing worked such havoc amongst school children for so many years, they also unite in testifying that the Upright Penmanship enkindles a greater interest in the art specially with pupils, that it entails much less labour in teaching, that it wonderfully accelerates the rate of progress and improvement, that it secures a much higher standard of excellence and that it materially increases the speed of the writer. ”

“ Of equal value is the consideration that this greater ease is carried outside and beyond the mere teaching and learning of the art. To the Vertical Writer no weariness or "writers' cramp" will ensue from any ordinary or even extraordinary exercise of his art. The task of writing is proceeded with under the best conditions possible and thus it comes to pass that Upright Penmanship is not only taught in about half the time that the oblique style needs, but that it makes a much smaller demand upon the energy or working power of the ordinary writer to produce. ”

“ How was it related to the indolent serenity of the beautiful Upper-worlders? And what was hidden down there, at the foot of that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well telling myself that, at any rate, there was nothing to fear, and that there I must descend for the solution of my difficulties. And withal I was absolutely afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of the beautiful Upper-world people came running in their amorous sport across the daylight in the shadow. The male pursued the female, flinging flowers at her as he ran. ”

“ If for example, when my Father, the Triangle, approaches me, he happens to present his side to me instead of his angle, then, until I have asked him to rotate, or until I have edged my eye round him, I am for the moment doubtful whether he may not be a Straight Line, or, in other words, a Woman. ”

“ And if a person were to go from the lower to the middle region, would he not imagine that he is going up; and he who is standing in the middle and sees whence he has come, would imagine that he is already in the upper region, if he has never seen the true upper world? ”

“ On the other hand, the Above and the Below is absolutely invariable for all persons, for the lines running between Above and Below are all parallel for them, since they all have uniformly the same disc under their feet and the same heaven above their heads. ”

“ In fine, if, instead of comparing immediately adjacent parts of two beds, one of which lies upon another, we compare distant parts, it is quite possible that the upper may be any number of years older than the under, and the under any number of years younger than the upper. ”

“ Almost everything seemed to be horizontal, but such things as stood perpendicular in this flat world gained a gigantic height. The two human beings looked at each other in amazement that such a tall man and woman existed. ”

“ With it are gone suddenly the very quarters and cardinal points of life’s chart, there is no longer any right hand or any left, any north or south, any rising of the sun or any going down, any forward or backward direction in his path, any heaven above, or any hell below. ”

“ In the centre there is less of beauty, because there is no contrast, and it is by comparison that we form our estimates.
In the heart of the upland all is equally barren, and the variations of elevation are small. ”

“ To sum up, the eye, owing to the laws of its mechanism, follows a line much more easily in the central than in the peripheral parts of the field, and in the central parts it follows a vertical line more easily than an oblique, and an horizontal more easily than a vertical. ”

“ Without counting that if a vertical descent of sixteen leagues costs us a horizontal of eighty-five, we shall have to go about either thousand leagues to the southeast, and we must therefore come out somewhere in the circumferences long before we can hope to reach the center. ”

“ In proof of the fact that the half balance, or that on either side of the vertical is sufficient in many subjects, see such portraits in which the head alone is attractive, the rest being suppressed in detail and light, for the sake of this attraction.
It is rarely that figure art deals with balance over the horizontal central line in conjunction with balance over the vertical. ”

“ And from this, one or two things developed, as things will, that made a little uppishness here and there. For out of certain situations, uppishness does seem to arise, same as cream out of milk, or dust out of furniture.
One afternoon I looked out my window, and I see the three Sunday school superintendents come marching up my brick walk—ain’t it funny how, when men goes out with a proposition for raising pew-rent, or buying a new furnace for the manse, or helping along the town, they always go two or three strong? ”

“ If one looks at the top of a letter, the letter is below the line of vision, and, therefore, appears to move downward. If one looks at the bottom, the letter is above the line of vision and appears to move upward. If one looks to the left of the letter, it is to the right of the line of vision and appears to move to the right. If one looks to the right, it is to the left of the line of vision and appears to move to the left. ”

“ The second division, in E major, is marked by an andante contemplativo on the words, ‘There is a river [155] the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God.’ This movement is intended to be one of tranquillity, varied with occasional passionate outbursts on the words, ‘God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved.’ A peculiar rhythmical effect is sought by the alternation of 4/4 and 3/4 time, three bars of the first being answered by two bars of the second. ”

“ If we make the lower line, which appears objectively after the upper one, more intense, the total impression is one which begins with the lower. We see first the lower line moving toward the upper one which also approaches the lower ”

“ Why, there is one who has reached the top; he is not to be compared with a fly so much as a midge—who would have thought it? We are close under now and I find that the block by which I am standing is the height of my shoulder, and I am fairly tall. ”

“ Please neglect for a short time the slight wobbling motions that occur. One observation we make is, that the top does not at first bow down in the direction of the blow. If I strike towards the south, the top bows towards the west; if I strike towards the west, the top bows down towards the north. Now the reason of this is known to all scientific men, and the principle underlying the top's behaviour is of very great {32}importance in many ways, and I hope to make it clear to you. ”

“ The people in the North of Caithness in directing us on our way did not tell us to turn to right or left, but towards the points of the compass—say to the east or the west as the case might be, and then turn south for a given number of chains. ”

“ The left hand, with its unconsciously developed power, of course usually unexercised, of mirror-writing, affords only a very crude illustration of what this implies, and a very imaginative illustration is in the flashing of the morning light as it reaches height after height of the beholder's outstretched world. ”

“ Whatever be our standard of up and down, the sensible representation of up will be an image moving on the retina towards the lower side, and the sensible representation of down will be a motion towards the upper side. The head of the man’s image is towards the image of the sky, its feet are towards the image of the ground ”

“ I demanded wrathfully.
"The rug is woven; the weaver is dead," she said.
"Oh, go on, Geraldine," I insisted; "don't stop half way in a thing like that. It's the East—it's the real East, I tell you. How you do it—you who have never seen the East—Heaven only knows!" ”

“ And in favour of the view that some such huge collection of sensibles is the upper side of the half-crown, is the fact that we do seem to have a strong propensity to believe that any particular sensible, which we directly apprehend in looking at the upper side of the half-crown, and of our direct apprehension of which the upper side is the source, is in the place in which the upper side is. ”

“ In the sculptured hieroglyphics of Central America, and in the Mexican picture-writings, the human and other profiles are introduced in the large majority of examples looking to the left, as would be the natural result of the tracings of a right-handed draftsman. ”

“ Lord Upperton brings you his high station in life, his nobility, his long line of ancestors, a barony, a castle with its ivied walls, a retinue of servants, his armorial bearings inscribed on banners borne by Crusaders. He will offer you rank, wealth, privilege, honor at his majesty’s court. ”

“ So accustomed is the eye to vertical lines in tree trunks, tall buildings, and thousands of other examples that the upward eye movement in viewing an object, having a predominance of vertical elements, seemingly adds to its height. ”

“ As in the ascent of the elevation, step by step, we can judge imperfectly of its height, until from the very summit we look down upon our place of starting, so with the wretched outcasts of society of whom we speak. ”

“ Why need I travel to seek a site, and consult the points of the compass? My eyes are south windows, and out of these I command a southern prospect. The eye does the least drudgery of any of the senses. ”