Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1884 — Garfield Writing with Both Hands. [ARTICLE]

Garfield Writing with Both Hands.

A gentleman who knew G arfield well tells this story: “We were sitting,” said this “iff the office of the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Thompsd?, of Indiana, waiting to be heard on some matter of routine business, when Garfield took his seat at a vacant desk near by, and commenced writing with both hands upon scratch-pads on either side of him. He seemed to write with one hand as freely as with the other. Both hands, in fact, appeared to move automatically. The only difference was that the lines on the tablet written with the left hand were reversed from the usual order. The consequence was that the writing on the left hand tablet eould not be read except by an expert or by holding it up to a light or before a mirror. I looked at the one written with the left on its upper side, and, while the lines seem remarkably uniform, they conveyed no meaning; but holding the thin paper up to the light I saw not only that the words written were the same as those on the tablet written with the right hand, but that every peculiarity in the formation of a letter which was formed on the righthand tablet was exactly on the left hand. The achievement was a marvel to me, as I had never heard of. it before, although I have since heard that many people do it. Garfield said that he often wrote in that way whenever he wished to preserve an exact copy of what he was writing without having a copy made by letter-press, and

that in this manner he saved a great deal of time without any more appreciable fatigue. I asked him how he got into that habit He said that while teaching school once he had occasion to use his right hand to point out something, and that unconsciously he kept on writing on the blackboard with his left. Upon turning to the blackboard to see what he had written, he observed that the writing was reversed, but that he had full use of his left hand for writing, and from that time he made use of both hands. He was, in fact, completely ambidextrous.”— Nashville Cor. Boston Journal. «