Page:A Desk Book on the Etiquette of Social Stationary.djvu/87

 from some form of cotton and linen cloth. What is required for the fibre of the paper is the long, soft filament found best in the textile plant. The only way to secure these filaments for paper-making is to put them first through the process of being made into cloth. Therefore, all good writing papers are made from rags, but 's fine writing papers are made only from fresh, clean, white fragments of cloth, such as the trimmings from collars, shirts, muslin and linen dresses and white goods of all sorts. These fragments, although apparently they are perfectly white and in a far better condition than the rags collected from the piece bags of the average family, are nevertheless not white enough to produce a perfectly white writing paper. They are thoroughly sorted, cleaned, dusted, and all buttons, hooks and eyes and other hard substances removed. Then they are dusted and beaten again, and washed and washed and washed, and bleached and bleached and bleached, and finally reduced to the fineness of the original filaments of the plant.