*In a humorous article, "The Web-footed Interests," which appeared in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. iii., page 280 (1833), there is a petition to the House of Commons, from Ganders, Geese & Goslings, setting forth the evils likely to ensue from the use of metallic pens. It prognosticates depression in agriculture and manufactures consequent upon a diminution in the amount of grain consumed, and a falling off in the demand for penknives; and draws an alarming picture of the possible failure of the supply of iron ware, and the total extinction of literature, likely to ensue through a stoppage in the supply of steel pens,--the web-footed interest being supposed to have ceased to exist. The petition concludes with a prayer that the manufacture of metallic pens be prohibited. To the writers of the present generation, who can purchase fairly-good pens at one shilling or one shilling and sixpence per gross, it seems hard to realize that people once gave one shilling each for substitutes for quills. It is true that quills could then be bought for a halfpenny and penny each, but how difficult it was to acquire the art of successfully manipulating the same into a pen the following anecdote from "Edwards' Life of Rowland Hill" will testify: "Mrs. Sinkinson, of Jamaica Row, Birmingham, tells me she went to a school in Hurst Street, and that she remembered that old Mr. Hill came one day a week to teach arithmetic, and Rowland [Sir Rowland Hill] on another to teach writing. In those days there were no steel pens, and Rowland couldn't mend a pen, so that whenever he came he was accompanied by his brother, Matthew Davenport, whose office it was to mend the pens used by the pupils the preceding week." Sir Josiah Mason used to relate a similar circumstance in his own life, when at Kidderminster, that he accompanied his brother Richard, who was a Sunday-school teacher, to mend the pens. Comparing the crude specimens of early steel pens with the finished productions of the present day, we may be inclined to think that some praise was due to the people who persevered in the use of them; but that the purchasers of these early productions did appreciate them we have the testimony of Mr. Robert Griffin, who says that he wrote for eight weeks, eight hours a day, with a pen made by Perry, in 1824. Now, the old _"scribes,"_ as the law stationers' writers were called, were generally allowed one quill a day, and as the work of the day usually wore out the longest quill, a considerable amount of time must have been occupied in the renovation of the article.* This would be a serious inconvenience to those who could manufacture a quill into a pen, but as this was by no means an universal accomplishment, we can form an idea how even these clumsy substitutes found purchasers at such high prices.