Writing-master's Initial
In olden times but one kind of a pen was used, one cut from a goose-quill with the feathers left on the handle. The selection and manufacture of these goose-quill pens was a matter of considerable care in the beginning, and of constant watchfulness and "mending" till the pen was worn out. One of the indispensable qualities of a colonial schoolmaster was that he was a good pen maker and pen mender. It often took the master and usher two hours to make the pens for the school. Boys studied arithmetic at eleven years of age, but were not allowed to make pens in school till they were twelve years old.
Ink was not bought in convenient liquid form as at present; each family, each person had to be an ink manufacturer. The favorite method of ink-making was through the dissolving of ink-powder. Liquid ink was but seldom seen for sale. In remote districts of Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts, home-made ink, feeble and pale, was made by steeping the bark of swamp-maple in water, boiling the decoction till thick, and diluting it with copperas. Each child brought to school an ink-bottle or ink-horn filled with the varying fluid of domestic manufacture.
Writing of Abiah Holbrook
A book called The District School, written as late as 1834, shows the indifferent quality of the ink used. The writer complains that the parents made a poor ink of vinegar, water, and ink-powder, which the child could not use, and permitted to dry up while he borrowed of the teacher. The inkstand is then "used at the evening meetings as a candlestick." Other inkstands with good ink are seized and used for the same purpose and the ink ruined with grease and nothing left to write with when the teacher sets his scholars to work.
There are no remains of olden times that put us more closely in touch with the men, women, and children who moved and lived in these shadowy days than do the letters they wrote. Old James Howell said over two centuries ago: "Letters are the Idea and the truest Miror of the Mind; they shew the Inside of a Man." Certainly the most imaginative mind must be touched with a sense of nearness to the heart of the writer whose yellowed pages he unfolds and whose fading words he deciphers. The roll of centuries cannot dim the power of written words.