This uncle was a monk, and called Father Gottlieb, and was considered at that time a very learned man.  He was good as well as learned, and full of kindness to his little nephew Hans, who, from having so early lost his own parent, looked up to Uncle Gottlieb as a real father, and loved him as one.

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A monastery, I must tell you, was a place where a number of men lived together away from the rest of the world, in order, as they thought, to devote themselves more to the service of God, than if they were mixed up with the business and pleasure of life.  Whether they were right or wrong in so doing, we will not now stop to inquire, but we must point out that this custom had at that time a great many advantages, and certainly enabled these monks to do a great deal of service to their fellow-creatures.  One of the most important of these services was with regard to the making of books, such as we have before described.  It was in these monasteries, or houses of monks, that nearly all the books of those times were written or transcribed, and a number of the monks were always employed, if not in writing books, at all events in making copies of those which had been written before.  A room called the Scriptorium, or writing-room, was to be found in every monastery, and most of the monks could either write or read, and were looked upon in consequence as very learned and wise.  This made the visits of little Hans to his uncle very pleasant.  There was nothing he thought so great a treat as to have something read to him out of one of Father Gottlieb’s books, for he possessed two of these precious volumes.  One was a copy of the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, you know, and the other was a history of the lives of some of the holy men that have been called saints by the Catholics.  Seated on a low stool at his uncle’s knee, Hans could have listened for hours to stories of the patriarchs Abraham, and Jacob, and Joseph, which Father Gottlieb slowly read from the pale written volume; but the duties of the convent allowed him only short portions of time, in which, shut up in his own little room or cell, he could entertain his dearly loved nephew; and often when both were so engaged he had to jump up at the sound of a bell calling him to prayers, and then, hastily locking up the precious volume, he would kindly stroke the boy’s curly head, and with a message to his mother, bid him farewell.  At other times he would take Hans into the beautiful chapel belonging to the monastery, and show him its gaily adorned altars, and curious images; and once or twice Hans got a peep into the Scriptorium, or writing-room, were the monks were at work over their sheets of parchment, writing so carefully one after another the curiously formed letters which were then in use, and which are still used in the printed books of Germany.  Being read to, and finding what pleasure arose from being able to read, and seeing so much of book-making and writing,