While I was sick last month, I started making my way through the Sherlock Holmes mysteries I so loved as a child. Of course, now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to put them down. And I was amused to read the following in The Hound of the Baskervilles:
If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else.
I daresay I’ve never been to a hotel that had fountain pens on hand, let alone a dip pen. But judging from the cheapo Bics they all seem to offer, I’d say very little has changed in the abstract.
Actually, I’ve switched back to the old BIC Chrystal Ball Point Pens I used as a child. I watched a show on “How do they make That” and saw what all went into the pen.
Amazing is that you can basically write 2 Kilometers worth before it runs dry. (Try that with a Gel Pen).
Peace!
2 Kilometers is impressive, Wothbora! I guess my hotel pens always seem to be at the tail end of their race…