“Of course we buy at auctions. The Anderson Galleries are noted in New York for their sales and so is the American Art Association. Both appeal to the collector rather than to the dealer and prices are often prohibitive.
“Values are being created there and it very often happens that some collector pays five hundred dollars for something that he refused to pay fifty for to the dealer.
“One of the hobbies of American collectors is a page with the unbroken lines of all the signatories to the Declaration of Independence. Another favorite object is the signatures of the presidents of the United States. I pay a good deal of attention to the latter, having collected them myself. Do you want to hear my opinion of the handwritings of our various presidents and some natural conclusions reached as to their character?
“Most of them wrote a good clear hand. At seventeen years of age Washington wrote a clear, round hand, upright with a tendency to ornamentation of the capital letters. In 1760 he wrote a smooth, running hand, and during the war of the Revolution this changed to the large beautiful round hand, the finest specimen of writing of which I have any knowledge. This persisted to his death.
“John Adams wrote an up-and-down, round hand, rather small, early in life, and gradually growing larger until the individual letters were bigger than those made by any other president. At the end, when his sight failed, his writing became an irregular scrawl—on and off the line.
“Thomas Jefferson started with a fluent running hand, and this characteristic his signature retained throughout his life. Shortly before the Revolution his hand changed to a round, upright form and so continued.
“James Monroe wrote a very running hand, crowding his letters together and often going off the line. He fancied a heavy writing pen.
“John Quincy Adams wrote a plain, perpendicular hand with no ornamentation, almost a backhand. In late years it showed much trembling in the letters, but remained clear.
“James Buchanan wrote a round, running hand, sometimes large and sometimes small, with each letter well formed. His writing continued the same all his life.
“Abraham Lincoln wrote at first a plain running hand with letters well made and words well spaced. As years passed it became more upright until at the end it was straight up and down.