The Handwriting Wizard Psvcno-GnaroLocy:, 4 STUDY oP Ra YAD Scuentann." "By Eugene Bagger. Putnam, 3s. Od, When Sherlock Holmes glanced a stranger and then remarked casually, for the benefit of Dr. Watson, that this stranger was a clerk with a wife and three children, a collector of foreign stamps, and to be bad-tempered on Wednes-Jdays and Fridays, he was performing a feat that is merely childish when compared with those performed regularly by the subject of this new book, Rafael Schermann, Schermann' is the great Viennese psycho-graphologist, who has been performing miracles for years. In the firs place, of course, being graphologist, he is a handwriting expert in the ordinary way, and jean deduce character from hand. writing. But he can do a great deal more—he can see visions by means of handwriting. His peculiar f culty has been described by Professor Fischer, of the University of Prague, as "second sight, induced or stimulated by handwriting,"
And in this little book Mr. Bag-zor describes the activities of this unique personality. Some of Scher-man's results seem to be due to jan amazing acquaintance with what may be called the science of serintreading, and do not appear to have any visionary quality in them, 'Thus, he once traced an unpleasant person who for years had tormented a family by telephone hoare: He looked over the family corres pondene", Mr. Bagger tells us, and found in' one of the handwritings the shape of a telephone receiver wrought most ingeniously into the jeapital D. and S. The writer, he Jargued, was "preoccupied with' the telephone, and when he saw her privately, and accused her of being the author of these hoaxes, she broke down, confessed, and promi fed not to do it again. It appears that people are apt to introduce to their script anything with which they are preoccupied.
Mr. Bagger gives us_ specimens handwriting submitted to Scher-mann, in which he found traces of 'a hand, a revolver, a steamship, and '30 on, and made his deductions accordingly. But even if persons do not give themselves away in this fashion, they are not safe from this wizard, because the very sight of script induces a certain faculty of vision or clairvoyance in him. This faculty. has been tested. time after time by showing him the handwriting of persons who, unknown to him, have already met their death in some unusual way, and he has declared very emphatically either what had_or what would happen to them. He has, we gather, prevented murders and suicides, reunited lovers, detected criminals, and sav-fed innocent persons, and even noticed diseases.
"He locks at a couple of script Bagger tells us, out "of them he reconstructs the story of two human lives. His and his visitor is overwhelmed. He excitement from the outset has helped in establishing a psychic contact with the seer; but now he will is like clay in his hands. He commands her to surrender the poison she carries. So he knows that, too! She opens her bag and hands over the poison." And all is well The most astonishing detective in the wildest sensational narrative never dreamed of the feats deseribed by Mr. Bagger. Fact is continually over-reaching fiction, and Scher~ mann well deserves a volume all to himself—"Daily News."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.