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The natural crow-quill is a much more sympathetic tool than a steel pen, although not quite so certain in its line. But more play and variety is to be got out of it, and when a free pen drawing is wanted it is preferable. Reed pens are also made, and are useful when thick lines are wanted.

As I look at his effigy opposite the title-page, I seem to hear him say, "You may play old Poz, if you will; you may rail and exaggerate, I stand here for truth, and will not, for all the states, and churches, and revenues, and personal reputations of Europe, overstate the dry fact, as I see it; I will rather mumble and prose about what I certainly know, my house and barns; my father, my wife, and my tenants; my old lean bald pate; my knives and forks; what meats I eat, and what drinks I prefer; and a hundred straws just as ridiculous, than I will write, with a fine crow-quill, a fine romance.

The natives, too, immediately set to work to collect them, giving them a pinch and putting them into baskets which they carried at their sides. They were quite as eager to obtain them as the birds were. On picking some of them up I found that they were fully half an inch long, as thick as a crow-quill, and very fat.

Some said that his relations were going to set aside the will, on the plea that it was written with a crow-quill on pink paper; but this was false; it was only a codicil. All eyes were on a very pretty woman, with fifteen thousand a year, and only twenty-three. The Duke of Shropshire wished he were disembarrassed. Such a player of écarté might double her income.

He was in high dudgeon, but the white walls, the prie-dieu, the straight, narrow bed were pleasant to see. His room was the first agreeable impression of the day. He picked up a drawing from the table, it seemed to him awkward and slovenly. He sharpened his pencil, cleared his crow-quill pens, got out his tracing-paper, and sat down to execute a better.

My poetical compositions, which I only carried on the more zealously as the transcript went on becoming more beautiful and more careful, now inclined altogether to the natural and the true: and if the subjects could not always be important, I nevertheless always endeavored to express them clearly and pointedly, the more so as my friend often gave me to understand what a great thing it was to write down a verse on Dutch paper, with the crow-quill and Indian ink; what time, talent, and exertion it required, which ought not to be squandered on any thing empty and superfluous.

A.B. received a severe punctured wound by a hook of the size of a crow-quill, which pierced into the flesh between the thumb and fore-finger on the outside of the hand; scarcely a drop of blood followed, but there was immediately severe pain and tumefaction.

When we wish to judge of a man's character by his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common workaday pen, not his best small-text, traced laboriously with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of character recognizably presented to the view of others.

The latter was marked accordingly with a "P," carved rudely enough by one whose hand was much more practised in slitting the weasand of a buck, than in cutting out, with crayon, or Italian crow-quill, the ungainly forms of the Roman alphabet.

While swarming they appear like snow-flakes floating about in the air, and dogs, cats, hawks, and almost every bird, may be seen busily devouring them. The natives, too, profit by the occasion, and actively collect them for food, they being about half an inch long, as thick as a crow-quill, and very fat. When roasted they are said to be good, and somewhat resemble grains of boiled rice.