This world would be a far different place if there were peace among pens. As it is, however, every pen wears a drop of ink on its shoulder.

Not even the tender ministrations of chamois cloth will soothe its savage heart. It is deaf to sweet reasonableness. Returning drunk from the inkwell, it will smutch the hand that fed it, cast blots upon the fairest names, and ravish virgin sheets of paper. And when you try to force it to a more civilized way of behaving, you discover it has its points crossed.

A pen thus divided against itself will not write. There must be freedom for the black fluid. There must be perfect harmony—two prongs with but a single point, two parts that meet as one. Disunion is a sign of weakness.

I had a pen once whose prongs became estranged. They were egoists: each followed his individual bent, and was determined to make his own mark in his own field. For the sake of appearances, they took their meals of ink together, but immediately afterward, when pressure was brought to bear upon them, they separated. Yet when one of them, striving too hard after originality, broke under the strain, his widow was left desolate.

More domestic in an old-fashioned way is that staunch, blunt family, the Stubbs. They are firm and substantial sort of pens. By people who dislike them they are called phlegmatic, stodgy, close, stiffnibbed; and it must be admitted, they do lack the sprightliness of the Sharps; but, after all, these unyielding puritans, with their heavy touch, are more trustworthy than their acute but volatile cousins. For temperament in a pen finds vent in sudden splutterings.

The difference in their natures is evidenced by the way they meet obstacles. The Stubbs, plodding along doggedly, overcome all hazards in the paper; whereas the Sharps, tripping nonchalantly, come to grief at the first bunker, and before they get started again, waste several strokes and gouge the course. And when the Sharps attempt to run the gauntlet of expensive linen stationery (the higher the price, the higher the ridges), they get held up at every cable crossing. But there is a kind of paper—smooth, slippery, insidious—that prompts both the Sharps and the Stubbs to evil ways. They know they are doing wrong, however; for they are ashamed, and conceal their tracks, rendering all tracing impossible.

It is a great pity that pens are not more consistent about their ink giving. One moment they are stingy, and the next lavish. Perhaps this may be due to absent-mindedness.

Beginning a letter to a crabbed old relative, you say to your pen, "Give me a little ink for 'Dear Uncle Jonathan.'"

It ignores the request. You urge again. Still it is thinking of something else. "Here, wake up, now!" (You shake it violently.) "Give me some ink!"

"Why, certainly," it replies effusively. "Take a blot."

And "Dear Uncle Jonathan" is buried with deep mourning.

Haphazard as their outgivings appear to be, I have a theory that they are in reality quite logical; for I have noticed that pens spend most ink on things that are worth most. Thus, a pen that would grudge to disburse a single minim on a cheap sheet of a pad, will gladly expend all it has upon a costly embroidered tablecloth. And it finds the flyleaf of a handsome book (which if separate from the volume it would regard as a mere scrap of paper) amazingly absorbing. If it take a fancy to something large and sumptuous, such as an oriental rug, and yet not have on hand sufficient ink for such an outlay, it will appropriate it with a deposit of spot splash.

However little aptitude a pen may have for writing, it is sure to display rare skill as a fisherman. In the most unpromising inkwell it will catch deep sea monsters that astound you. It will spear great flounders of blotting paper and wriggly eels of string. It will drag up from the bottom wreckage of forgotten times, prehistoric flora and fauna—an antique rubber band, a female tress (perhaps of some ink-nymph long dead or discharged), a tack bent with age, a perfectly preserved shoe button, a less perfectly preserved mummy of a fly.

The perseverance of this follower of Izaak Walton is admirable. It will cast patiently again and again without a single dribble, and then, all at once, it will come struggling triumphantly to the surface with a whale of a June bug it has harpooned. Whereupon, as is the custom with fishermen who write, it will make a grand splurge of its catch on paper.

In order to prevent such piscatorial dippiness, pen fanciers have bred the fountain species, the latest variety of which is self-spilling. Pens of this artificially produced species are very nervous. They have to be handled with extreme care. For example, if one of them is held upside down, all the ink runs to its head, and there is danger of a hemorrhage. Its digestive system is poor: it regurgitates and bubbles at the mouth. The least thing upsets its stomach. If you forget to put its cap on, even in mild weather, it contracts a serious congestion of the throat; with the result that the next letter you write proves dry-point etching.

Taken all in all, pens have a great deal to answer for. The record they have left on the pages of history is a black one. Many a person who has sat down to write something bright and optimistic, has been so disillusioned and embittered by his pen, that he has ended by hacking a hymn of hate or drooling a dirge of despair. Which accounts for most of the world's harsh diplomacy and morbid literature.

Even this essay was originally intended to be cheerful.