Albertine Green

The wife of my Editor's colleague owns a small printing works.  Everything is printed by hand on old hand presses.  Imagine that!  She does a roaring trade in wedding invitations, greeting cards, you name it.  We went for a visit today and found the proprietress hard at work printing green "Love" cards.  The roller is inked with two different shades of green which blend to form this very subtle variation from one side to the other.  The card blanks are registered in a frame so that they all contact the roller at the same spot, you crank a handle and out pops a card.  It all comes down to good, old-fashioned mechanics: gears, chains, finely machined steel parts, the smell of grease, machine oil - and printing ink.  For my particular kind of heaven, the only thing missing was coal smoke...