Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 124, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1909 — Sand as Writing Paper. [ARTICLE]

Sand as Writing Paper.

"We have all seen sand used as blotting paper,” said a 'school director, "but In New England I saw it used as writing paper. "Sand was the original blotting paper. White and clean, it was Kept in a cruet, like a salt cr-.et, and shaken out on the wet writing through the perforated top. "There art affected people—the kind of people who write with (.uill pent —who still use sand as a blotter. But I thought that as a writing paper it had disappeared forever. "Recently I vjeittl a country school hi New Hampshire. On tbe master's desk sat a box, three feet square, filled with sand Tne children came, one at a time, to ;be box. and with a pointed stick by way of pen they wrote. As each child 'finished he smoothed out his writing, leaving the sand smooth for the next comer. "This odd sdbne carted me back to the days when paper was so scarce, when slatee were so scarce, that sand was used t» the schools to write on —the day* of my grandfather and great-grandfather. ” Wbite pine lumber costa today five times as much tn this country as It east la iaa.