It's been a bit since I find a nice penmanship practice notebook-- I think in part because I've gotten pickier about the ones that I like! This one, kept by a Harriet Humphries, is undated, but I've looked at enough of these to believe it is mid 1800s, with plain blue paper cover and plain laid paper pages bound with string. Typical spreads feature a shorter repeated phrase in larger lettering on one side, and a longer repeated sentence on the other. I always love these for the content as well as the aesthetics, and there are lots of good ones here: "innocence is a never fading beauty," "buy the truth and sell it not," "strive to be virtuous," "if you would win a pen of gold," "sensibility how charming," "from purity of thought all pleasure springs." I especially like the page of "Incomprehensibility" repeated over and over again, loosing a few of its letters in one case to become quite incomprehensible! Lovely penmanship in black ink, strong throughout, really a nice example.
7 13/16" x 6 5/8"; 18 pages filled front and back. Excellent condition, black ink on laid, next to no toning, no tears, tightly bound. Documented pages are representative of all.
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