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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 recognisably presented to the view of others.
As a general rule, the more delicate points are better suited to the smooth surfaces, where they are not likely to get tripped up and "shaken" by the roughness in the paper. To begin with the smaller points, the "Gillott Crow-quill" is an excellent instrument.
He procured her some checks, and she filled up one in a hand of crow-quill lightness, which looked indescribably like herself, but with a readiness which showed that she must have been before familiar with banking business. He presented the check, and it was honored without enquiry, this fact proving that her signature was known; and thus all anxiety on the pecuniary question was set at rest.
For some time the crow-quill had been cut ready for use; for some time the paper with its coloured vignette had been waiting by the side of the amber writing-case; yet Edmee paid no attention to them and made no attempt to use them. The letter lay open in her lap; her feet were on the fire-dogs, her elbows on the arm of her chair in her favourite attitude of meditation.
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.
Gave Jock Stevenson the picture of my old favourite dog Camp, mentioned in one of the introductions to Marmion, and a little crow-quill drawing of Melrose Abbey by Nelson, whom I used to call the Admiral. Poor fellow! he had some ingenuity, and was, in a moderate way, a good penman and draughtsman.
The elephants are fond of the fruit, plant, and root alike. I here found an insect which preys on ants; it is about an inch and a quarter long, as thick as a crow-quill, and covered with black hair. It puts its head into a little hole in the ground, and quivers its tail rapidly; the ants come near to see it, and it snaps up each as he comes within the range of the forceps on its tail.
The normal thickness of its line is extremely small, but so beautifully is the nib made that it will respond vigorously to a big sweeping stroke. I say a "sweeping stroke," as its capacity is not to be taxed for uniformly big lines. An equally delicate point, which surpasses the crow-quill in range, is "Gillott's Mapping-pen." It is astonishing how large a line may be made with this instrument.
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