y the name of the
maker and the name and number of the variety of pen, and it is pressed
between a pair of dies to form it into a curve. The last annealing
left the metal soft so that all this could be done, but too soft to
work well as a pen; and it has to be heated red hot again, and then
dropped into cold oil to harden it. Centrifugal force, which helps in
so many manufactures, drives the oil away, and the pens are dried in
sawdust. They are now sufficiently hard, but too brittle. They must be
tempered. To do this, they are placed in an iron cylinder over a fire,
and the cylinder revolved till the pen is as elastic as a spring.

The pen is of the correct shape, is tough and elastic; and now it is
put into "tumbling barrels" which revolve till it is bright and ready
for the finishing touches. If you look closely at the outside of a
steel pen just above the nib, you will see that across it run tiny
lines. They have a use, for they hold the ink back so that it will
not roll down in drops, and they help to make the point more springy
and easier to write with.

The pen must be slit up from the point. This is done by a machine, and
a most accurate one, for the cut must go exactly through the center of
the point and not reach beyond the little hole that was punched. Only
one thing is lacking now to make the pen a useful member of society,
ready to do its work in the world; and that is to grind off the points
and round them in order to keep them from sticking into the paper.

After so much careful work, it does seem as if not one pen out of a
thousand could be faulty; but every one has to be carefully examined
to make sure that the cutting, piercing, marking, forming, tempering,
grinding, and slitting, are just what they should be. These pens carry
the maker's name, and a few poor ones getting into the market might
spoil the sale of thousands of boxes; therefore the examiner sits
before a desk covered with black glass and looks at every pen. The
faulty ones are heated so that they cannot be used, and they go to
the scrap-heap.

Now the pens are ready so far as usefulness goes, but people have
preferences in color. Some prefer bronze, some gray, and some black;
so off the pens go to the tempering-room, their last trip, and there
are heated in a revolving cylinder till the right color appears; then
they are chilled and lacquered, put into boxes, labeled, packed, and
sold for such low prices that the good folk of a century