Grandfather Coster had carried the bark letters cut from the trees
in the grove, for the instruction and amusement of his little
grandsons.

"See what the letters have done!" echoed the old man. "Bless me,
what does the child mean?" and his eyes twinkled with pleasure, as
he noted the astonishment and pleasure visible on the little face.
"Let me see what it is that pleases thee so, Laurence," and he
eagerly took the parchment from the boy's hand.

"Bless my soul!" cried the old man, after gazing spellbound upon
it for some seconds. The track of the mysterious footprint in the
sand excited no more surprise in the mind of Robinson Crusoe than
Grandfather Coster felt at the sight which met his eyes. There,
distinctly impressed upon the parchment, was a clear imprint of
the bark letters; though, of course, they were reversed or turned
about.

But you twentieth-century young folks who have your fill of story
books, picture books, and reading matter of all kinds, are
wondering, perhaps, what all this talk about bark letters and
parchment and imprint of letters means.

To understand it, you must carry your imagination away back more
than five centuries--quite a long journey of the mind, even for
"grown-ups"--to a time when there were no printed books, and when
very, very few of the rich and noble, and scarcely any of the so-
called common people, could read. In those far-off days there were
no public libraries, and no books except rare and expensive
volumes, written by hand, mainly by monks in their quiet