legant writing
implement.

[Footnote 2: For example, E. A. Humphrey Fenn, "The Writing on the
Wall," _History Today_, 19 (1969), 419-423, and "Graffiti,"
_Contemporary Review_, 215 (1969), 156-160; Terrance L. Stocker,
Linda W. Dutcher, Stephen M. Hargrove, and Edwin A. Cook, "Social
Analysis of Graffiti," _Journal of American Folklore_, 85 (1972),
356-366; Sylvia Spann, "The Handwriting on the Wall," _English
Journal_, 62 (1973), 1163-1165; Robert Reisner and Lorraine
Wechsler, _Encyclopedia of Graffiti_ (New York: Macmillan, 1974);
"Graffiti Helps Mental Patients," _Science Digest_, April, 1974,
pp. 47-48; Henry Solomon and Howard Yager, "Authoritarianism and
Graffiti," _Journal of Social Psychology_, 97 (1975), 149-150;
Carl A. Bonuso, "Graffiti," _Today's Education_, 65 (1976), 90-91;
Elizabeth Wales and Barbara Brewer, "Graffiti in the 1970's,"
_Journal of Social Psychology_, 99 (1976), 115-123; Ernest L. Abel
and Barbara E. Buckley, _The Handwriting on the Wall: Toward a
Sociology and Psychology of Graffiti_ (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1977); and Marina N. Haan and Richard B. Hammerstrom,
_Graffiti in the Ivy League_ (New York: Warner Books, 1981).]

Glass being fragile and diamonds being relatively rare, it is not
surprising that few examples of graffiti produced by the method employed
by Moll and her lover are known to us today. Interestingly enough, we
do, however, have available to us a variety of Renaissance and
eighteenth-century written materials suggesting that the practice of
using a diamond to write ephemeral statements on window glass was far
less rare in those periods than we might expect. Holinshed, for example,
tells us that in 1558 when Elizabeth was released from imprisonment at
Woodstock, she taunted her enemies by writing

these verses with hir diamond in a glasse window verie legiblie as
here followeth:

Much suspected by me,
Nothing prooued can be:
Quoth Elizabeth prisoner.[3]

[Footnote 3: _Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and
Ireland_ (London, 1808), IV, 133.]

And in John Donne's "A Valediction: of my Name in the Window," we find
two lovers in a situation reminiscent of that of the scene I previously
quoted from _Moll Flanders_. Using a diamond, the poet, before beginning
an extended journey, scratches his name on a window pane in the house of
his mistress. Here is the first stanza of the poem:

My