Fowler wrote a large sprawling hand, as may be judged by the fact that only 174 of these small open pages are required to print his 264 folios, with my 176 notes. He commonly conforms to the requirements of dotted _i_ and crossed _t_, but otherwise strikes out for himself in the formation of letters. His most original invention is an _r_ which would puzzle Œdipus, as it is always a careful _n_; most of his short-stroke characters look alike in their resemblance to bends of the Arkansaw river on a map, and his long strokes seem as if they had been struck by lightning. The incessant capitals are flourished elaborately, and not confined to initial letters. Fowler is also fond of capping little words, as if he thought they needed such help to hold up their heads with big ones, and equally apt to begin proper names, sentences, and paragraphs with lower-case letters. This style of composition appears on the printed page, which faithfully imitates every peculiarity of the original which can be set with an ordinary font of type. The syntax is the sort which has been happily called “dash dialect”—Fowler has no other punctuation than the dash, excepting a sporadic period here and there, usually misplaced, and an occasional stab at the paper which is neither one thing nor another, and may therefore be overlooked. His spelling speaks so well for itself in print that little need be said on that score. Its entire originality, its effusive spontaneity, its infinite variety, will charm the reader while it puzzles him, and make the modern manufacturer of Dialect despair of his most ingenious craft. Aside from sheer slips of the pen, by which Fowler often misses letters, as in writing “campe,” “caped,” “capped,” or “capted” for _camped_, there is a particular point to which I may call attention as the most characteristic—in fact, the diagnostic—feature of his composition. It is that habitual omission of final _y_ which makes the definite article do duty for the third personal pronoun nominative; and when this is followed by a misspelled verb simulating a noun, some curious locutions result. Thus, “the Road” stands for _they rode_; “the Ware,” for _they were_; “the Cold,” for _they could_; “the Head,” for _they had_; “the Maid,” for _they made_—and so on, to the end of the book.