Anything unusual that appealed to my senses left exaggerated marks. My
father once in full uniform appeared to me as a giant, so that I
screamed and ran, and required much of his kindest voice to coax me back
to him.
Also once in the street a dancer in fancy costume struck me in the same
way, and seemed in his red tunic twice the size of the people who
crowded round him.
I think as a child the small ground-flowers of spring took a larger hold
upon me than any others:--I was so close to them. Roses I don't remember
till I was four or five; but crocus and snowdrop seem to have been in my
blood from the very beginning of things; and I remember likening the
green inner petals of the snowdrop to the skirts of some ballet-dancing
dolls, which danced themselves out of sight before I was four years old.
Snapdragons, too, I remember as if with my first summer: I used to feed
them with bits of their own green leaves, believing faithfully that
those mouths must need food of some sort. When I became more thoughtful
I ceased to make cannibals of them: but I think I was less convinced
then of the digestive process. I don't know when I left off feeding
snapdragons: I think calceolarias helped to break me off the habit, for
I found they had no throats to swallow with.
In much the same way as sights that have no meaning leave no traces, so
I suppose do words and sounds.
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