|
This is a collection of Fountain Pen Articles, Fountain Pen Histories and Fountain Pen Essays that have been published either online or in obscure books or jorunals. Things that I found while doing research on other pen topics and I thought were too good to be lost to obscurity and should be put online where a Google search could unearth them easily for the fountain pen enthusiast and fountain pen researcher.. If you know of an article that should be placed here, please let me know.
Feel free to use this information as you like, but I would appreciate a mention for the Kamakura pens site if you publish an article, or book with information gathered here. Recently, I have seen people publish pen articles exclusively from my archive with out any mention at all and that always breaks my heart.
Any Comments? Please send an e-mail to: rd@kamakurapens.com |
|
Found in the Republican-Freeman | 1888-08-04
The Monody of a Pen
The Affecting Plait of a Castaway
with an Eventual History
I' m but a worn-out fountain pen. my use-
ful days are o'er; so badly battered up am I,
they've slung me on the floor, begins the
poet of the Boston 'I'ranscript, who in this
instance represents the worn-out fountain,
pen. A writer's hand has weilded me for
more than half a year, and now that I can
mark no more, I'm lying sadly here. The
janitor may come, perhaps, and claim me
for his own, or with the other waste and
truck perhaps I may be thrown: and o£ the
millions in the world, not one in all the
men will ever give another thought to this
ol' fountain pen.
The man who used to
write with me, before he'd start to think,
would rudely twist, me all upart and chuck
me full of ink, and then I'd scratch along
and tell of some bright youthful bride, who
wed the only man she loved, secure aud
joyous-eyed: and of her dress and of the
buds that decked her glowing hair, and of
the words the parson said about the "happy
pair." And then I'd glide along the page
and leave the letters bold, to tell how some'
one gathered in a wondrous pile of gold,
and all the other little things that go to
make a day, and now that all my work is
done I'm calmly slung away.
I've told of births, I've told of deaths,
of joy and dark despair; I've told
how vagrants are run in, how'
dudes oil up their hair; I've quoted Latin,
French and Greek, bad English I have
known, I've treated of the loud guffaw and
likewise of the groan. I've helped to kick
when days were hot, and when they were too
cold; I've run in lines from chestnut poems
is when "the knights were bold;" I've,
.told how in some lonely grave the clammy
earth was flung, I've shown how some at
eve, have wept, how some at eve have sung.
How Richard Roe got thirty days for going
on a drunk, how Paddy won a slugging'
match because he'd lets of spunk; how'
some one, smiling, took a gun aud aimed it
at a friend, and in a jesting, joking way,,
brought one life to an end. Of how the
smiling servant lit the fire with kerosene,
and swopped her apron for a robe where
fires are never seen; of how some stumbling
feet went down toward the burning bars,
while others clambered up the road that
leads toward the stars. I've told of human,
misery, ot human grief as well, of musey
flasksof ancient wine and buckets in the,
well; of gray-haired men and women old. of'
happy girls and boys, of groans and smiles,
of prayers and thanks, of sorrows and of,
joys; and now my point is worn away, I`ll,
scribble never more, but lie alone, a broken
wreck, upon the office floor; and those
who've read of all I've told, in all the ranks
of men, will give but little credit to this
busted Fountain Pen.