A Fall from Grace

It is my duty to report a slight misadventure. Whilst perched high upon the Scriptorium stepladder yesterday evening, overstretching myself in a futile attempt to reach Grace (a little known philosophical masterpiece from 1612 by Sir Geffrye Buccleuch), I missed my footing and found myself soon – sooner, indeed, than was advisable for a man of my age and size – prone upon the polished parquet.

My own rapid descent was soon matched by that of a hefty tome from the Anthropology section, dislodged it would appear by my flailing arms.

‘Great Scott, Teed, is it all right?’ exclaimed Mr Bennett from his illustrator’s eyrie.

‘To which part of my anatomy are you referring?’ I enquired from my painfully supine position.

‘Not you, you buffoon – the book!’

Luckily I was able to alleviate Mr Bennett’s concerns by informing him that my chest had broken the fall of said tome.

‘Which volume was it?’ he enquired.

‘A large one’, I replied, rubbing my ribs.

Bibliographical concern for the volume’s well-being drew my colleague swiftly from his artistic perch, and he was soon lovingly caressing it.

‘It’s Lorimarr Sedgewick’s Lost Tribes of America‘, Mr Bennett informed me as I picked myself painfully from the floor.

‘Which volume?’ I enquired.

‘Volume III. Ah, this takes me back, Mr Teed’.

I joined my colleague in poring over the third volume of Sedgewick’s landmark anthropological work.

‘Unless I’m mistaken’, continued Mr Bennett, ‘this volume was the source for one of our earliest Lexiconfusions’.

‘You are indeed in the right, Mr Bennett’, I replied. ‘I believe the word was Genial. It must have been one of the first Lexes that we created for The Times of London, as our American cousins so charmingly term it’.

‘I’ll look it up in the Lex scrapbook – I mean the Index’, my colleague said, and went to fetch the immense folio in which we archive all our published and unpublished researches.

In the meantime I repaired to a fireside armchair in an effort to soothe my aching torso, and began to reacquaint myself with Lorimarr Sedgewick’s remarkable piece of work, hoping to stumble once more upon the citation which had once inspired us.