HIS INDELIBLE PENCIL

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3189, 13 September 1917, Page 6

HIS INDELIBLE PENCIL

AMUSING INCIDENTS IN HOSPITAL' BEDS. A soldier writes from hospital:—Tho manufacture of "copying-ink" or "indelible" pencils is one of the industries which ought to have received a : mild fillip from the war. Even if lie possesses a fountain pen it is not always easy for the soldier to get ink for it, and though little pellets of dried ink are procurable (one pellet and.the reservoir filled up with water is supposed to charge the pen), the diet'docs not agree, very well with some fountain pens. 'The. "indelible" pencil, on the other hand, is always ready; it slips over the roughest paper with an ease that iacilitates the scrawling fist indicative of the nigh pressure of military life, and even a rain does reduce the address on the envelope to a blue smudge, at lea* it emphasises the indelible nature, of tfaa medium. But on this last point any nurse in a military hospital has probably her own peculiar testimony to offer. . ■~ However fondly the'composition of the copying-ink pencil may stick to; paper, its affinity for human skin is positively miraculous. In hospital that affinity regularly gets its chance: The method is simple in the extreme. The bed patient, using his usual writing _ instrument, sharpens that instrument in bed. .Invariably he gets.the resulting «ust on his fingers; equally inevitably the moisture of his skin turns that dust into a speckled violet effect. Then the seffeter seizes his sponge or flannel from his locker at the bedside, and, rubbing. vigorously, transforms the speckles into a consistently level stain. (Incidental !y he probably transfers some of the iirus to his sponge, and later from the sponge to his'face.) But the finest effect is achieved when the patient, magnificently unaware of the consequences, manages to distribute the results of his pencilsharpening over his 'pillow; and thence down the neck of: his shirt, tnven'a warm enough night, the result next morning would impress a Maori chiet. In.a hospital in Alexandria there were l>ed patients whose decorated necks ana. shoulders were the despair of the nursing staff for ten days at a time. Shrapnel splinters are more easily removed from the human frame than the composition of some "indelible pencils.