To write that same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only _three _strokes. To write the word “laugh,” the pen has to make _fourteen _strokes. To write “laff,” the pen has to make the _same number_ of strokes—no labor is saved to the penman. To write the same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only _three _strokes. To write the word “highland,” the pen has to make twenty-two strokes. To write “hyland,” the pen has to make eighteen strokes. To write that word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only FIVE strokes. (Figure 3) To write the words “phonographic alphabet,” the pen has to make fifty-three strokes. To write “fonografic alfabet,” the pen has to make fifty strokes. To the penman, the saving in labor is insignificant. To write that word (with vowels) with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only _seventeen _strokes. Without the vowels, only _thirteen _strokes. (Figure 4) The vowels are hardly necessary, this time. We make five pen-strokes in writing an m. Thus: (Figure 5) a stroke down; a stroke up; a second stroke down; a second stroke up; a final stroke down. Total, five. The phonographic alphabet accomplishes the m with a single stroke—a curve, like a parenthesis that has come home drunk and has fallen face down right at the front door where everybody that goes along will see him and say, Alas! When our written m is not the end of a word, but is otherwise located, it has to be connected with the next letter, and that requires another pen-stroke, making six in all, before you get rid of that m. But never mind about the connecting strokes—let them go. Without counting them, the twenty-six letters of our alphabet consumed about eighty pen-strokes for their construction—about three pen-strokes per letter. It is _three times the number_ required by the phonographic alphabet. It requires but _one _stroke for each letter. My writing-gait is—well, I don’t know what it is, but I will time myself and see. Result: it is twenty-four words per minute. I don’t mean composing; I mean _copying_. There isn’t any definite composing-gait. Very well, my copying-gait is 1,440 words per hour—say 1,500. If I could use the phonographic character with facility I could do the 1,500 in twenty minutes. I could do nine hours’ copying in three hours; I could do three years’ copying in one year. Also, if I had a typewriting machine with the phonographic alphabet on it—oh, the miracles I could do! I am not pretending to write that character well. I have never had a lesson, and I am copying the letters from the book. But I can accomplish my desire, at any rate, which is, to make the reader get a good and clear idea of the advantage it would be to us if we could discard our present alphabet and put this better one in its place—using it in books, newspapers, with the typewriter, and with the pen.