f the
cleverest things in the world to be able to write; while he who was so
happy as to be the possessor of a book, was esteemed one of the most
fortunate of human beings.

This may seem strange to you little girls and boys, my readers, who ever
since you were born have been surrounded with books of all sizes and
shapes, and on all sorts of subjects, from the books of grown-up people
that you could not understand, down to your most favorite story book
that you do understand and like so well as to read again and again.

We must, however, remind you, that books in those days were very
different things from what they are now, and their great value arose
from the fact that they were all written with pen and ink upon
parchment; for although a kind of paper had been made at that time, it
was not commonly used; and it was only after weeks and months of careful
labor, that one of these written books could be produced, so that it is
no wonder that a great value was set upon them. A book too was so
prized, that people liked to ornament it as much as possible, and many
of these written or manuscript books, which means _written by
hand_, had not only beautiful pictures in them, but were bound in
rich bindings, sometimes silk embroidered with gold and silver thread,
and sometimes even the backs were of beautifully carved ivory, or
adorned with filagree work, and pearls, and precious stones.

We value books in our time, but we do not ornament them so very much,
because we would rather have twenty interesting books on our shelves to
read by turns, than one precious volume locked up with clasps, and kept
in a box only to be taken out on particular occasions; and instead of a
man spending half his life over the writing of such a book, letter by
letter, word by word, and page by page, a man who in the course of a
little time has set the small metal letters together, which we call
printing types, so as to form a number of pages, can print those pages
if he likes on ten thousand sheets of paper, which will form a part of
ten thousand books of the same kind, and which when finished can be read
by _ten times ten thousand_ human beings!

But we will return to little Hans. We have said that he lived not far
from the town of Mainz, in Germany, and we must mention that one of the
most pleasant things he had to do in his little life was to pay a visit
occasionally to this great town and see all the busy and wonderful
things that were going o