"New pheasant-feather pens, and two reams of the most expensive cream laid paper..."

Bob Slate is closing, the stationer to Mr. Earbrass and his spiritual heirs.  Anywhere else one can buy mere office supplies, the slick, the bulk, the interchangeable; but Slate's is particular.  Slate's is for scholars, poets, artists, aesthetes, and scribblers with that fine lefthand nib.  It is a joy just to pass their windows, and an everyday bliss to shop.  They have everything one could desire:  fine rag papers, inks, fountain pens (with grave consultants at the counter), notebooks, sketchbooks, artist's chalks and colored pencils in an infinitely shaded rainbow, lay figures, the absolute best greeting cards, wittiest or prettiest, and the most exquisite wrapping papers, worthy to be framed.  (Woodblock Chinese characters, black, white, and lacquer red; every named variety of berry; the sun, moon, and stars from old astrologies.  I can never bear to use the last few inches.)  If you have to have this pen or that folder, Slate's still carries it.  Slate's is where I get my toile de Jouy folders for readings and my peacock blue and green carriers.  Where else?  And every story I've written, every word, was typed or printed out on Slate's papers, watermarked for last drafts.  Slate's is where I once looked down at the ream I'd just carried to the cash desk and said, "Oh dear.  I seem to have gotten laid by mistake."

One by one they've closed, the glories of the old Square—the bookshops, backrooms, coffee houses, attics, and odd corners—whelmed now in a wilderness of mall.

Requiescat in papyro.

Nine