y religion, not by industry. Religious enthusiasm
was alone worthy to give birth to the instrument of truth.

What mechanical processes Gutenberg may until then have revolved in his
mind, remains unknown. Whatever they were, chance effaced them all, and
brought him at once upon his great discovery. One day, at Haarlem, in
Holland, the verger of the cathedral, named Lawrence Koster, with whom
he had established friendly relations, showed him in the sacristy a
Latin grammar, curiously wrought in engraved letters on a wooden board,
for the instruction of the seminarists. Chance, that gratuitous teacher,
had produced this approach to printing.

The poor and youthful sacristan of Haarlem was in love. He used to walk
on holydays to the spring outside the town, and sit under the willows by
the canals, to indulge in his day-dreams. His heart full of the image of
his bride, he used to amuse himself, in true lover's fashion, by
engraving with his knife the initials of his mistress and himself,
interlaced, as an emblem of the union of their hearts and of their
interwoven destinies. But, instead of cutting these ciphers on the bark,
and leaving them to grow with the tree, like the mysterious ciphers so
often seen on the trees in the forests and by the brooks, he engraved
them on little blocks of willow stripped of their bark, and still
reeking with the moisture of their sap; and he used to carry them, as a
remembrance of his dreams and a pledge of affection, to his lady-love.

One day, having thus cut some letters on the green wood, probably with
more care and perfection than usual, he wrapped up his little work in a
piece of parchment, and brought it with him to Haarlem. On opening it
next day to look at his letters, he was astonished to see the cipher
perfectly reproduced in brown on the parchment by the relieved portion
of the letters, the sap having oozed out during the night and imprinted
its image on the envelope. This was a discovery. He engraved other
letters on a large platter, replaced the sap by a black liquid, and thus
obtained the first proof ever printed. But it would only print a single
page. The movable variety and endless combinations of characters
infinitely multiplied, to meet the vast requirements of literature, were
wanting. The invention of the poor sacristan would have covered the
surface of the earth with plates engraved or sculptured in relief, but
would not have been a substitute for a single case of mova