Page:A Desk Book on the Etiquette of Social Stationary.djvu/90

 close, homogeneous fabric, absolutely uniform in color and consistency and perfectly white.

This fine, long, white, beautiful web of paper, put together by the gentle, imperceptible action of the water until no part of it is thicker or thinner, lighter or darker than the other, is cut into sheets as it comes from the paper-making machine.

These sheets consist of nothing but the fine, absolutely white, perfectly felted filaments of the cotton plant.

Such a sheet, beautiful as it is, could not be written upon as it would act upon the pen like blotting paper. Before it becomes the writing paper that you know, it must be sized. That is, it must be filled with a transparent filling or sizing, the best of which is made from gelatine, which gelatine is produced from the hides of cattle. When you hear a stationer speak about a sheet of paper as being "animal-sized" or "tub-sized," you will know that it has been made in the best possible way.

In the finest writing papers each sheet is