that is going on in every department of life. It may be the struggle
of Summer against Winter, the bright Day against dark Night, Innocence
against Cruelty, of Knowledge against Ignorance. We are not obliged to
think of these delightful stories as each having a meaning. Our
enjoyment of them will not be less if we overlook that side, but it may
help us to understand and appreciate good books if we remember that the
literature of the world is the story of man's struggle against nature;
that the beginnings of literature came out of the mouths of story-
tellers, and that the stories they told were fairy tales-imaginative
stories based on truth.

There is one important fact to remember in connection with the old
fairy tales, and that is that they were repeated aloud from memory, not
read from a book or manuscript.

The printing of books from type may be said to date from the year 1470,
when Caxton introduced printing into England. It is said that the
first book printed in English which had the pages numbered was a book
of tales, "Aesop's Fables."

As late as 1600 printed books were still so rare that only rich men
could own them. There was one other way of printing a story-on
sheepskin (split and made into parchment) with a pen-but that was a
long and laborious art that could only be practiced by educated men who
had been taught to write. The monks were about the only men who had
the necessary education and time, and they cared more for making copies
of the Bible and Lives of the Saints than they did of fairy tales. The
common people, and even kings and queens, were therefore obliged to
depend upon the professional story-teller.