and hearts proud and corrupt. Without thee, they would rest in the shade; shut in a narrow circle, they would be known only to their associates, and during their lives. By thee, they will bear folly, mischief, and crime to all men and all ages. See thousands corrupted with the disease of one! See young men depraved by books whose pages distill soul-poison! See young women become immodest, false, and hard to the poor, by books which have poisoned their hearts! See mothers mourning their sons! See fathers blushing for their daughters! Is not immortality too dear which costs so many tears and such anguish? Dost thou desire glory at such a price? Art thou not appalled at the responsibility with which this glory will weigh down thy soul? Listen to me, John: live as if thou hadst discovered nothing. Regard thy invention as a seductive but fatal dream, whose execution would be useful and holy, if only man was good. But man is evil. And in lending arms to the evil, art thou not a participator in his crimes?” “‘I awoke in a horror of doubt! I hesitated an instant; but I considered that the gifts of God, though they were sometimes very perilous, were never bad, and that to give an instrument to aid reason, and advance human liberty, was to give a vaster field to intelligence and to virtue,--both divine. I pursued the execution of my discovery.’” Thus has the art of printing come down to us consecrated by the martyr struggles of a heroic soul. He died poor, able only to leave a few books to his loving sister, yet enriching all mankind by the fruits of his genius. “I bequeath to my sister,” said he in his will, “all the books printed by me in Strasbourg.” But which of the voices that the legend represents as speaking to Gutenberg in his dream, shall prove a true prophet of the art? Shall its resistless power blast the world with error and crime, or bless the ages with truth and purity? “The first cries of the press,” says a historian, “were praise and prayer.” Let its utterances be for religion and learning, God and humanity; then welcome the hour when the earth shall be covered with its swiftly multiplying issues, “the leaves of the tree which are for the healing of the nations.” THE END. Transcriber’s Notes Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained. Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Illustrations without captions at the beginning and end of most chapters are decorative headpieces or tailpieces. Page 52: “He revolved” was printed that way. Illustration captions on pages 162 and 188: The Psalm number in “PSALTER, PSALM I.” appears to have been printed as a Roman numeral, but may be an Arabic “1”. Page 175: “pierced his roul” may be a misprint for “soul”.