I found a pressed 6-leaf clover hiding in an expensive rare book. A few years ago, I purchased, for an exorbitant $128, what was promised (original typo: primrosed) to be the most unusual travel account ever published -- the surrealist painter Ithell Colquhoun's exploration of the eerie magic of the Irish countryside,
The Crying of the Wind. (It hadn't yet been republished in softcover; I was a year too early!) I'd been sufficiently impressed by
Colquhoun's dreamy occult novel Goose of Hermogenes to trust that the travel book would beguile me. It did! And though I can't help but wonder why the Universe tricked me into spending $128 just before the softcover came out, I do know that a new softcover wouldn't have had a pressed 6-leaf clover, so perhaps it all somehow works out in the end.