*The writer recollects the tedious waiting for the patient usher, who from desk to desk with his penknife, mending pens, and paying very little attention to anything else; also the wonder felt and expressed at the first sight of steel nibs, and how they dug into the paper. Tom Hood, in his "Whims and Oddities," gives some idea of the pre-steel-pen era: "In times begone, when each man cut his quill, With little Perryian skill; What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade Appeared the writing instruments, home made! What pens were sliced, hewed, hacked, and haggled out, Slit or unslit, with many a various snout, Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby, Humpy and stubby; Some capable of ladye-billets neat, Some only fit for ledger-keeping clerk, And some to grub down, Peter Stubbs, his mark, Or smudge through some illegible receipt, Others in florid caligraphic plans, Equal to ships, and wiggy heads, and swans! To try in any common inkstands then, With all their miscellaneous stocks, To find a decent pen, Was like a dip into a lucky-box; You drew, and got one very curly, And split like endive in some hurly-burly; The next unslit, a square at end, a spade; The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made; The fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail, Turned upwards, like a rabbit's tail; And last, not least, by way of a relief, A stump that Master Richard, James, or John Had tried his candle cookery upon, Making 'roast beef!'" These early pens were at first made from a piece of steel formed into a tube, and filed into the shape of a pen by hand, the joint of the two edges forming the slit. Afterward a blank was roughly punched out, filed into shape, and the slit marked out with a chisel while the blank was in a soft state. It was then shaped, hardened, tempered, ground, and the slit cracked through by means of a hammer and tool at the place where the mark had been made. The engravings of the pens by Edwards, which appeared in _Wrightson's Directory,_ 1823, seem to indicate that the piercing, side cutting and slitting were executed by mechanical appliances. Possibly, Edwards was not a manufacturer himself, but had his pens made for him by Mitchell. In the pre-steel-pen era there were many attempts made to supersede quills. In "Peveril of the Peak," Mistress Chiffinch speaks of her _diamond pen._ There was a pen the nibs of which were of ruby, set in gold, made by Doughty. Dr. Wollaston made gold pens tipped with, rhodium.