Month after month went by, until finally the work was finished and the scribes were ushered into the royal presence, bearing in their arms the product of their long-continued labor. Roll after roll of the finest parchment was submitted to Solomon for inspection. Each skin began with an illuminated letter, and the whole work was done in the highest style of the art. Well pleased was Solomon when these rolls were all properly packed, secured from rain, placed upon the backs of camels, and the caravan, with a military escort, had set out for the distant land of Sheba. Then again in the gray of the morning Solomon was at his meditations upon the housetop. Again he called a messenger who should summon to his presence the chief of the scribes. [Illustration: AN ANCIENT SCRIBE.] "What was the cost of making the copy of our sacred writings for the Queen of Sheba? How many shekels have been paid to the scribes for their work?" When the chief scribe had found out he reported it to the king. "Is it indeed so much?" said the king; and when he had thought how many months it had taken for that large number of scribes to make a single copy of the sacred books, then he exclaimed: "Of making _many_ books there is no end." CHAPTER II. THE PRINTING PRESS. The times have changed since King Solomon's day. The art of printing has been discovered. Now it would be possible to make not merely one copy but thousands of copies, not only of the sacred books of the Jews in the time of Solomon, but of the entire Bible as we have it to-day. Not in the months required by the Jewish scribes, but in a single month, thousands of copies of the whole Bible could be printed from the type set in a single establishment in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. Surely, before the art of printing one might truly say, "Of making books there is no end." But to-day our modern press sends out its volumes by millions, so that no longer is there any truth in this apparently wise statement of Solomon. It was true in his day, but times have changed. Two visitors were wending their way through Machinery Hall at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Clatter, clatter, clatter--clatter, clatter, clatter--jigger, jigger, jigger--jigger, jigger, jigger. What was that great machine that they were approaching? It was the Walter press, invented in London for the London _Times_,--"The Thunderer." Well, well! the press does thunder, literally, does it not? It was printing that day's issue of the New York _Times_, and there were coming from that press about twelve thousand copies of the double-size sheet in an hour. Well might it make a racket if it accomplished such a work as that.