[sionnsar]

I couldn't find it

It wasn't one of his and probably is not online, it's so old.

It would be really funny to dig it up, reflecting as it did the frustration with increasing use of numbers experienced ca 1961. When a telephone number was written "TE 2-8455", when zip codes didn't exist, when a computer was a giant vacuum-tube machine that filled a room with people waiting on it hand and foot...

[NicknamedBob]

All I can tell you is that lief, or liefer, seems to be an Americanism. I recall Louis L'Amour using expressions such as, "I'd as lief not go there, right now."

lief (lêf) adverb
liefer, liefest
Readily; willingly: I would as lief go now as later.

adjective
liefer, liefest
Archaic.
1. Beloved; dear.
2. Ready or willing.
[Middle English leve, lef, dear, willingly, from Old English lêof, dear.]