Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/840

816 smooth for future service; so this combination lacked none of the advantages of the slate and pencil. The master wrote words for the boys to copy, and often held beginners' hands; the letters were sometimes cut deep in the wax, so that the boy could easily trace them with his stylus. A set of wax tablets with verses from Menander, evidently the furnishing of a schoolmaster, has been found in a grave in Egypt. One of these tablets has the approval "Diligent."

Though the tablet was cheaper and more common in daily life, both papyrus bark and the hides of animals (parchment) were used. Herodotus mentions the use of paper made of the bark of the Egyptian papyrus plant called "Biblos," our Bible, which not only means, from its Greek use, "the Book," but farther back in its history is the name of this papyrus plant. The stalk, about three feet long, was cut lengthwise, and the different layers of bark, generally about twenty in number, were carefully severed with a pin and afterward plaited crosswise, pressed, and perforated with limewater till the required consistence was obtained. The finest paper was obtained from the innermost layer; the outer layer was used in making rope. The use of the hides of goats and sheep was fully as ancient, and differed from the papyrus in allowing writing on both sides, while the bark paper allowed it only on one side.

Pens of split and pointed reeds with black and red inks were used on the papers. Quintilian prefers the tablet and stylus, and objects to the pen and paper, as the frequent dipping into the ink tends to distract continuous thought—apparently a queer objection, but our greatest American essayist. Holmes, in his Over the Teacups, makes the same comparison between the steel pen and the stylographic: "And here let me pay the tribute which I owe to one of the humblest but most serviceable of my assistants, especially in poetical composition. Nothing seems more prosaic than the stylographic pen. It deprives the handwriting of its beauty and to some extent of its individual character. . . . But abuse it as much as you choose, there is nothing like it for the poet, for the imaginative writer. Many a fine flow of thought has been checked, perhaps arrested, by the ill behavior of a goose quill. Many an idea has escaped while the author was dipping his pen in the inkstand. But with the stylographic pen, in the hands of one who knows how to care for it and how to use it, unbroken rhythms and harmonious cadences are the natural products of the unimpeded flow of the fluid which is the vehicle of the author's thoughts and fancies. . . . Its movement over the paper is like the flight of a swallow, while the quill pen and the steel pen and the gold pen are all taking short, laborious journeys, and stopping to drink every few minutes."