REST YOUR PEN.
Here is a hint for boys and girls who write. A correspondent of an English newspaper asked, the other day, if it improved a steel pen to give it a period of rest. The answer was:
Yes. Rest for a steel pen is not only good, but at times absolutely necessary, as it is for all steel tools if they are to continue in first-class order. A member of a well-known firm of steel-pen makers advised that if a pen gets scratchy and does not write well, it is not necessarily finished and fit for throwing away, but is probably only tired and in need of a rest. "Give it," said he, "a rest for a day or two, then hold it in a gas-light for fifteen seconds, not longer, and you will find it almost as good as new." Keeping steel pens in water when not in use, or converting a potato into a pen-wiper, is said to prevent corrosion and to preserve them for a long period.
Apropos of the steel pen, it is interesting to note that the earliest notice of steel pens is one by Wordsworth. In 1806 he and his family were occupying the house at Colerton during the absence of Sir George and Lady Beaumont, and in the month of December the poet wrote to the latter what he calls "the longest letter I ever wrote in my life," and with reason, as it fills eighteen pages. He begins: "My dear Lady Beaumont,—There's penmanship for you! I shall not be able to keep it up to the end in this style, notwithstanding I have the very great advantage of writing with one of your best steel pens, with which Miss Hutchinson has just kindly furnished me."
The next mention noted is one by Dr. Kitchiner, in 1824. When speaking of a friend above sixty, he says, "This strain of the eye and occasion for spectacles of a high magnifying power is particularly found in mending pens (this was when the goose-quill was the most generally accepted tool in the trade of authorship), so that he has a sufficient number of pens to prevent the necessity of mending any of them until he has finished writing." To this there is appended a note: "To those who find the mending of pens rather a difficult job, I recommend the occasional use of the steel pen, especially when they wish to write very small and neatly."