made little Hans wish very much to be able to read and write.  A few years before, he had thought that nothing could be so grand or nice as to be a knight and go to the wars, and he would make himself a helmet of rushes, and with a long willow wand in his hand for a spear, and his cross-bow slung at his back, he would try to fancy himself a warrior, and set off in pretence to the Holy Land, to fight against the Turks; but latterly he had begun to think that he should like nothing so well as to be able to read and write like Father Gottlieb, and the rest of the monks, and it was a great delight to him, when his uncle allowed him to take in his own hands one of the precious volumes to pick out the different letters and learn their names.

What brought Hans at this time very often to the monastery, was, that his uncle, whose turn it was to be purveyor or provider for the convent, had employed his mother to make what they called writing color or dye, for the copyist.  This was, of course, something the same as what we call ink and it so happened that Frau Gensfleisch was in possession of a secret by which a black dye could be made, which would not turn brown with time, as that of many of the manuscripts.  Every ten days or fortnight, therefore, it was Hans’ business to take to the convent a small flask of the valuable fluid, which his mother had carefully prepared, from certain mineral and vegetable substances, and it was no fault of his, if he did not on each occasion, somehow or other, add to his own stock of knowledge; getting at one time perhaps a verse or two read by his uncle, which finished the history of Joseph, or puzzling out for himself the difference between the shape of a C and a G, till he could quite distinguish them; or being told by his uncle some wonderful legend or history connected with the paintings and carvings on the walls of the convent; so that it may be said that the education of little Hans was slowly proceeding in those matters, which at that time was considered learning and science.  In the midst of all his other employments which did not require thought, Hans’ mind would be occupied with this new knowledge; and as he worked in the garden, or weeded and dressed the vines in their little vineyard, the remembrance of the stories Uncle Gottlieb had read to him or told him, would come into his mind, and the pictures he had shown him appear as it were before his eyes.  At night too, as he sat by his mother’s spinning-wheel, he would try to trace on the sanded floor the letters he had learned from the books, or begging a drop of black dye, he made attempts with a pointed stick to mark them on the wooden table.  Wherever he was, in fact, and whatever he was about, letters would dance before his eyes, and his former hopes of being a famous hunter or warrior when he grew up were all lost in the one great hope, which now filled his mind, of one day becoming a learned copyist or scribe.  Such was the change that had taken place in the mind