did not succeed.

At last the time came when he had no money left. He went back to
his old home, Mainz, and there met a rich goldsmith named Fust
(or Faust).

Gutenberg told him how hard he had tried in Strasburg to find some
way of making books cheaply, and how he had now no more money to
carry on his experiments. Fust became greatly interested and gave
Gutenberg what money he needed. But as the experiments did not
at first succeed Fust lost patience. He quarreled with Gutenberg
and said that he was doing nothing but spending money. At last
he brought suit against him in the court, and the judge decided
in favor of Fust. So everything in the world that Gutenberg had,
even the tools with which he worked, came into Fust's possession.

[Illustration: GUTENBERG AT WORK]

II

But though he had lost his tools, Gutenberg had not lost his courage.
And he had not lost all his friends. One of them had money, and
he bought Gutenberg a new set of tools and hired a workshop for
him. And now at last Gutenberg's hopes were fulfilled.

First of all it is thought that he made types of hard wood. Each
type was a little block with a single letter at one end. Such types
were a great deal better than block letters. The block letters
were fixed. They could not be taken out of the words of which they
were parts. The new types were movable so they could be set up to
print one page, then taken apart and set up again and again to
print any number of pages.

But type made of wood did not always print the letters clearly and
distinctly, so Gutenberg gave up wood types and tried metal types.
Soon a Latin Bible was printed. It was in two volumes, each of which
had three hundred pages, while each of the pages had forty-two
lines. The letters were sharp and clear. They had been printed from
movable types of metal.

III

The Dutch claim that Lorenz Coster, a native of Harlem, in the
Netherlands, was the first person who printed with movable type.
They say that Coster was one day taking a walk in a beech forest
not far from Harlem, and that he cut bark from one of the trees
and shaped it with his knife into letters.

Not long after this the Dutch say Coster had made movable types
and was printing and selling books in Harlem.

The news that books were being printed in Mainz by Gutenberg went
all over Europe, and before he died printing-presses like his were
at work making books in all the great cities of the continent.

About twenty y