She felt the paper, inspected it, touched it with her tongue, and seemed to admire it greatly; but the pencil excited still greater admiration.

I signed to her to write in the book.

She did so, but the characters were quite unlike anything that I had ever seen.

They were not joined like our writing and like Arabic letters, but were separate like our printed type, and were formed in an irregular manner.

She then showed me a book made of a strange substance.