Maybe not the greatest, but the whole paragraph’s pretty good:
> Theo, by occupation, was a devil. That is, he worked as apprentice and general servant to Anton, the printer. Before that, he was lucky enough to be an orphan, for the town fathers of Dorning prided themselves in looking after their needy. So, instead of sending him away to a King's Charity House, where he would be made miserable, they arranged the same for him locally. He was farmed out first to a cooper, then to a saddler, and in both cases did badly. Accidentally, he had learned to read, which in some opinion spoiled him for anything sensible. Anton finally agreed to take in the boy and teach him his trade.
And the rest of the page is great, and the rest of the chapter, and the whole book is a really great opening to a decent trilogy IMO (Westmark, by Lloyd Alexander).