not leak because the
needle fills up the hole. When you press the point on paper to write,
the needle falls back just enough to let out what ink is needed. The
flow stops the instant the pen ceases to touch the paper. The special
advantage of the stylographic is that the mere weight of the pen is
sufficient pressure, and therefore many hours of writing do not tire
the muscles of the hand. The advantage of the fountain pen is that it
has the familiar action of the gold pen, and that it will adapt itself
to any style of handwriting.

A pen of almost any kind is a valuable article, but for
rough-and-ready use we should find it hard to get on without its
humble friend, the lead pencil. A lead pencil, by the way, has not a
particle of lead in it. The "lead" is all graphite, or plumbago. Years
ago sticks of lead were used for marking, and made a pale-gray line.
When graphite was introduced, its mark was so black that people called
it black lead, and the name has stuck. No one who has ever tried to
use a pencil of real lead could fail to appreciate graphite, and when
a graphite mine was discovered in England, it was guarded by armed men
as watchfully as if it had been a mine of diamonds. That mine was
exhausted long ago, but many others have been found. The best graphite
in the world comes from Ceylon and Mexico.

When graphite was first used for pencils, it was cut into slabs and
these slabs into small strips. The broken and powdered graphite was
not used until it was discovered that it could be mixed with clay and
so made into sticks. In a lead pencil there are only three substances,
graphite, clay, and wood, but a really good one must be manufactured
with as much care as if it were made up of twenty. First of all, the
graphite is ground and ground and ground, until, if you take a pinch
of it between your thumb and finger, you can hardly feel that anything
is there. It is now sifted through fine silk and mixed with water and
finely powdered clay, and becomes a wet, inky mass. This clay comes
from Austria and Bohemia and is particularly smooth and fine. The
amount put in is carefully weighed. If you have a hard pencil, it was
made by using considerable clay; if your pencil is soft, by using very
little; and if it is very soft and black, it is possible that a little
lampblack was added.

This inky mass is ground together between millstones for several
weeks. Then it goes between rollers, and at length is squeezed
through a