Excerpt from A Picked Company: Being a Selection From the Writings of H. Belloc Here you cry Affectation! Affectationl How do I know that the fellow writes with a quill? A most unlikely habit! To that I answer you are right. Less assertion, please, and more humility. I will tell you frankly with what I am writing. I am writing with a Waterman's Ideal Fountain Pen. The nib is of pure gold, as was the throne of Charlemagne, in the Song of Roland. That throne (i need hardly tell you) was borne into Spain across the cold and awful passes of the Pyrenees by no less than a hundred and twenty mules, and all the Western world adored it, and trembled before it when it was set up at every halt under pine trees, on the upland grasses. For he sat upon it, dreadful and com manding: there weighed upon him two centuries of age; his brows were level with justice and experi ence, and his heard was so tangled and full that he was called bramble-bearded Charlemagne. You have read how, when he stretched out his hand at evening, the sun stood still till he had found the body of Roland No You must read about these things. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.