When I first found a very old edition of this book in my grandmother's attic, it maintained my attention for not only well past dinnertime, but well past adolescence, middle age, and even now--in my withering dotage I still find myself leafing through its worn pages, smelling memories, and running a finger along a cracked and well-known spine.
   I became an apprentice to a little-known printer by the name of William A. Bucklin in 1941. I was only 16, which was unfortunately late to begin my praxis, but I had been the subject of a private tutor up until that age. The tutor was, curiously, the only entry in my late father's last will and testament, and thus my only inheritance.
   W. A. Bucklin was, by all known accounts, the most prolifically unsuccessful printer and publisher the City had ever known. His trade consisted of mostly, at the time, thin pamphlets of romantic poetry and reprints of dead or dying political essays.
   When I signed on with the aging man, he had not lost one iota of his vigor. His confidence never once wavered in the face of business criticism or deficit bank accounts. While absorbed very much with himself and his publications, he treated all his employees like sons or daughters. It was because of this fatherly attention that I quickly grew a niche for him and the work in my heart, and no doubt vice-versa.
   After several years, I finally got up the courage to approach him with a submission of my own. I have never decided, to this day, whether or not I should have just told him the truth of its origins. But instead I gave him a transcribed and exact copy of The Intimations of the Doormice -- from the 1896 Edition that I had held close to my breast ever since finding it.
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