The Friday 56, The Pencil

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of Storytime with Tonya and Friends.
*Post a link along with your post back to Storytime with Tonya and Friends.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Did I make it? Is it still Friday? Okay so I'm a little late but better late than never, right? The book this week is The Pencil by Henry Petroski. And yes, it is actually a book about pencils. Some of it is rather dry but some of it is interesting. I never knew that counterfeit pencils were such a big problem or that some were once made with a mouthpiece for people who held the pencil in their mouth.

The sentence:

But that is not to say that all pencils were bought already fabricated. As late as 1714 a London broadsheet could depict an itinerant hawker whose cry suggests that he did not sell fabricated pencils as we know them, but rather still peddled the marking substance itself, suitable for the purchaser to insert in an appropriate holder:

Buy marking stones, marking stones buy
Much profit in their use doth lie;
I've marking stones of colour red,
Passing good, or else black Lead.


Now if that didn't get you to buy a 'pencil' what would? I must say I have a new appreciation for the pencil now.