He was a philosopher, and in his search after the natural and practical came to reason thus:-- “I want a system of impressing characters suited to the language. In Latin there are twenty-four letters, and the same letters are used over and over to spell many thousands of words. In a page of words I employ portions of the alphabet a number of times; and after I have done printing with the block, the carved letters are lost. If I could contrive a way of separating them, I could rearrange them without cutting new ones, and apply them to another page of different matter. “I must, then, have my letters for printing, separate, like the letters of the alphabet, so that I can handle them as readily as I use letters to form words. I must carve the letters in wood with little handles to them, that I may take them up, and place them together as if I were spelling!” Thus did the patient hero seize upon the idea of movable type,--the key-stone of the art of printing. He soon tried another experiment; splitting a block into strips, and working it down to the right size, he carved a letter on the end of it. This cost him care and labor, for it was more difficult than engraving on the solid block. Many bits of wood were carved before he succeeded in getting a letter to suit him. But after many trials he made one, then another, and another, taking pains to form the sticks of the right thickness, so that when they were placed together, the letters would not be too far apart. When he had the alphabet carved, each letter on the end of a little wooden peg, he had twenty-four type letters,--quite a little pile,--which he regarded with pride and satisfaction, and called them _stucke_, or type. Like a child in his first efforts in reading, so he carefully spelt his way onward. _Bonus homo_, “a good man,” were the words he first tried with his type. Taking the bits of wood with the letters _bonus_, he placed them one after the other as he spelt the word, and fastened them together with a string. But when he came to the next word, as he had only one _o_, he stopped and made two more before the word could be set up. As he tried other words, he found that he needed more letters; so, taking time, he cut out a large number of types for each letter in the alphabet. These he placed separately in little boxes to prevent them from being mixed. There was the box of A’s, the box of B’s, the box of C’s, and so on for all the letters. This was a font of movable type, the first ever made, and the great step of progress in his invention. If you will try the experiment of cutting type out of wood, you will more readily perceive the difficulties attending it. It was the work of months to accomplish this, which we have noted in two or three pages.