possible to
remember the exact figures after so many years, but they are inserted
to show the form the advertisements then took.

Faster than the improved facilities at his command enabled him to
produce, came the demand for his pens. To meet this, he brought from
time to time into use many mechanical appliances, the product of his
fertile and ingenious brain, until at length every one of the old
processes was superseded, and labour-saving machinery substituted. The
price of the pens fell from a shilling each to less than that sum per
gross, and the steel pen came into universal use. The enormous number
of yens produced in Mr. Gillott's works can scarcely be set down in
figures, but may be estimated roughly, from the statement made at
the time of his death that the average weight of the weekly make of
finished pens exceeded five tons. I have tried, by experiment, to
arrive at an approximate estimate of the _number_ of pens this weight
represents. I have taken a "scratch" dozen of pens, of all sorts and
sizes, and ascertaining their weight, have calculated therefrom, and I
find that the result is something like sixty thousand grosses, or the
enormous number of nearly nine millions of separate pens, sent out
from this manufactory every week.

In the course of the forty or fifty years during which Mr. Gillott was
in business, many other manufactories of steel pens were established,
at some of which, probably, greater _numbers_ of pens were produced
than at his own, but the _amount of business_ transacted was in no
case, probably, so great. Mr. Gillott did not compete in the direction
others took--lowness of price. Like his brother-in-law, Mr. William
Mitchell, he preferred to continue to improve the quality. It is
somewhat remarkable that, after long years of active and severe
competition, these two houses--the oldest in the trade, I
believe--have still the highest reputation for excellence.

It has often occurred to me that the invention of steel pens came most
opportunely. Had they not been invented, Rowland Hill's penny postage
scheme would probably have failed. There would not have been, in the
whole world, geese enough to supply quills to make the required number
of pens. Had Byron lived a little later on, his celebrated couplet
would not have apostrophised the "gray goose quill," but would
probably have run something like this:

"My Gillott pen! thou noblest work of skill,
Slave of my thought, obedient t