The custom of employing women as amanuenses has grown very largely of late years. It is said on good authority that, fifteen years ago, there were but five females in the city of New York who made their living by writing short-hand; at the present time there are, as nearly as can be estimated, between one hundred and fifty and two hundred.
"Which is the best system of short-hand?" is generally the first question asked by the person desirous of entering this profession. And that is a very difficult question to answer, and many of the answers that have been given to it have been very far from honest.
In the first place, it must be stated that there are about a score of "systems" of short-hand before the public, each of which has its defenders and advocates. Each is highly recommended in commendatory letters from this or that distinguished court or newspaper reporter. Each can show, and does show, first-class notices from prominent daily and weekly papers, and each has a circle of followers who loudly proclaim that the particular system they follow is not only the best in existence, but really the only one worth learning. In the search after short-hand truth, it is but natural that the would-be learner gets bewildered, and asks, "What shall I do?"
The system of short-hand practised by the vast majority of writers, both in this country and in England, is phonography, invented by Isaac Pitman, of Bath, England, in 1837. That system is based on an alphabet representing the sounds of the language, instead of the ordinary alphabet we use in spelling words. Since 1837 there have been many phonographic text-books written by as many different authors, and each author has added a hook here or a circle there, lengthened this stroke, or made that one heavier; and that accounts for the variety of "systems." The fact is, they are all based on the original phonography of Isaac Pitman, who himself, by the way, was the first to set the example of making changes and "improvements." For all _practical_ purposes phonography is no better now than it was thirty years ago. I dwell upon this point, for I know "the best system" has been a sad stumbling-block to many young people who were naturally anxious to start on the right road.