to more serious reading. He is too undeveloped
to comprehend printed words; but he can understand pictures. It was just
so in the olden days. The uneducated masses of people were as simple as
children. Hence the pioneer printers' initial efforts were turned in the
direction of playing cards, pictures for home decoration--or _images_,
as they were called--and genuine picture books, where the entire story
was told by a series of illustrations."

Mr. Cameron paused in his narrative.

"You can readily see, if you think for a moment," he presently went on,
"how such an innovation came about. Paper had not been invented, and
vellum was not only costly but too limited in supply to permit many
books being printed. Moreover, as I told you, hand in hand with this
objection was the fact that the majority of the public had no interest
in learning. Their intellects were immature. They were nothing but
grown-up children, and you know how children like games and picture
books. Well, those are the reasons why the next step in the development
of printing was in the direction of making playing cards. A coarse,
thick, yellowish paper was beginning to be produced--the first crude
attempt at paper-making--and on this material were engraved woodcuts of
varying degrees of artistic merit. Some of the designs were merely ugly
and clumsy; but some, on the other hand, were really exquisite examples
of hand-coloring, unique and quaint in pattern. Thus playing cards came
speedily into vogue. The finest ones were painted on tablets of ivory,
or engraved on thin sheets of silver. It is interesting, too, to note
that the old conventional designs then in use have, with very little
modification, persisted up to the present day. Probably the playing
cards in common use were printed by the same crude method as were the
images, and unfortunately history has failed to unravel just what that
method was. They may possibly have been stenciled. All we have been able
to learn is that cards, images (which were in reality religious
pictures), and stenciled altar cloths--the first primitive printing on
cloth--all appeared very early in southern Europe, playing cards having
their origin in Venice, where in 1400 and even before that date we read
of the Venetians playing cards."

"Do you suppose their games were anything like ours?" questioned Paul,
much interested.

"I doubt it. Probably, for example, there was no bridge whist in those
days," said his father, wit