—Byron.
FEATHERS have played an important part in the history of mankind. Henry of Navarre won the battle of Ivry after electrifying his men with the following words: "Fellow soldiers, you are Frenchmen; behold the enemy! If you lose sight of your ensigns, rally round my plume; you will always find it on the high road to honor!"
No doubt the templars carried the hearts of many with them in the crusades more effectually because their waving plumes gave them a picturesqueness which inspired brave men with courage and pious ones with holy zeal.
Savages delight in adorning themselves with feathers, and civilized women have found their charms enhanced by the placing of feathers against fair skins until the close of the nineteenth century finds a social struggle raging through fear that the demands of fashion may yet destroy from the face of the earth its sweetest songsters and its most beautifully plumed creatures.
Fans of feathers are admired the world over. In warm countries huge fans or screens made of beautiful feathers are often carried to shade royalty. In great processions the Pope is followed by bearers of magnificent fans of ostrich plumes. In the Sandwich Islands for a long time the enthroning of a new king was made gorgeous by his wearing a garment of many thousands of feathers; but recently, as if in preparation for a union with the United States, this state garment was buried with the king and the ceremony became simpler.
The noblest use to which feathers have been adapted has been in the production of writing instruments. The antiquity of the pen, regarded as a feather, is shown in the proof recently set forth by the philologists. Penna is the Latin for feather; farther back an instrument for flying is called patna; the Sanskrit which became penna in the Latin tongue became phathra in the mouths of the Teutonic peoples. So the English language, which is formed from both Latin and Teutonic elements, possesses two words, pen, and feather, which were one in their origin, have been widely separated during the ages, and now are united, but in such a way that only under the microscope of comparative grammar are we able to discover that they have the same blood in their veins.
Although the people living in warm countries wrote with the reed, the Chinese with a brush, and we have learned to fashion steel so it will do the work to better advantage, yet the feather has been a mighty agency in the civilization of the world.
Every teacher used to consider it one of the essentials of his equipment to possess a good penknife and know how to use it in making or mending pens for his pupils. Quills were first carefully cleansed from all oily or fatty matter and then dried. A gentle heat was applied to secure the brittleness which made it possible to split the pen point without spoiling the quill.