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 on there.  Mainz was a rich and important town at that time, and was governed by an Archbishop, who was called an Elector, because he was one of those who had the right of choosing an Emperor for Germany, when one was wanted.  Many Princes had also this right, but the Archbishop of Mainz had the particular privilege of setting the crown on the new Emperor’s head, when he was crowned in the neighboring city of Frankfort.  Besides seeing all that was going on at Mainz, and purchasing the different things that his mother wanted in the market, Hans’ great delight was to pay a visit to an uncle, who lived in the monastery of St. Gothard, near the great cathedral.