“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE. HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. N^{o.} 24.] SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._ ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS. THE STEEL PEN. We remember (early remembrances are more durable than recent) an epithet employed by Mary Wollstonecraft, which then seemed as happy as it was original:—“The _iron_ pen of Time.” Had the vindicatress of the “Rights of Women” lived in these days (fifty years later), when the iron pen is the almost universal instrument of writing, she would have bestowed upon Time a less common material for recording his doings. Whilst we are remembering, let us look back for a moment upon our earliest schooldays—the days of large text and round hand. Twenty urchins sit at a long desk, each intent upon making his _copy_. A nicely mended pen has been given to each. Our own labour goes on successfully, till, in school-boy phrase, the pen begins to splutter. A bold effort must be made. We leave the form, and timidly address the writing-master with—“Please, sir, mend my pen.” A slight frown subsides as he sees that the quill is very bad—too soft or too hard—used to the stump. He dashes it away, and snatching a feather from a bundle—a poor thin feather, such as green geese drop on a common—shapes it into a pen. This mending and making process occupies all his leisure—occupies, indeed, many of the minutes that ought to be devoted to instruction. He has a perpetual battle to wage with his bad quills. They are the meanest produce of the plucked goose.