3. Dress lightly for practice or competition.
4. Practice regularly, a little each day if possible.
5. Have regular hours for eating and sleeping.
6. Don’t smoke.
To a person who has the correct perspective on the penmanship habit the application of the hints enumerated will seem quite reasonable. To train in any line, one must practice. Repetition is necessary, and the time element essential, as it takes many efforts to accomplish the desired end, good penmanship. The muscles to be trained are large, and the conventional forms are small.
With a little forethought and planning the practice period may be varied, live and interesting. Everyone must learn, sooner or later, that much discipline may be gained by keeping steadily at work not interesting in itself. James says: “We have of late been learning much of the philosophy of tenderness in education; ‘interest’ must be assiduously awakened in everything, difficulties must be smoothed away. Soft pedagogics have taken the place of the old steep and rocky paths to learning. But from this lukewarm air the bracing oxygen of effort is left out. It is nonsense to suppose that every step in education can be interesting.”
Thoughtless practice might much better be left undone. There is no use in trying to excuse careless work to oneself with the thought, “I won’t count this time.” Each careless stroke is being registered though we do not count it; for nothing we ever do, strictly speaking, is ever wholly blotted out. Paths frequently and recently trodden are those that lie most open, and those which may be expected most easily to lead to results.
The first practice may be difficult, for the nervous and muscular systems have a new lesson to learn. The second and third trials will be easier, for the body has begun to recognize what lies before it. The following attempts will steadily become easier. A path means economy in traveling. The muscle should work with a fatalistic steadiness; if so, the result must necessarily be work done in a clean and finished manner.
Ready for Drill