Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare — Read

The fact is, Miss M. 's connection with good society was rapidly drawing to a close. My smoky little candle had long since begun to gutter and sputter and enwreathe itself in a winding sheet. It went out at last in a blaze of light. For once in his life Percy had conceived a notion of which his aunt cordially approved -- my Birthday Banquet. Heart and soul, all my follies and misdemeanours forgotten, she entered into this new device to give her Snippety, her Moppet, her Pusskinetta, her little Binbin, her Fairy, her Petite Sereine, an exquisite setting.

Invitations were sent out to the elect on inch-square cards embossed with my family crest and motto -- a giant, head and shoulders, brandishing a club, and Non Omnis Moriar.1 She not only postponed her annual departure from town, but, as did the great man in the parable, compelled her friends to come in. She exhausted her ingenuity on the menu. The great, on this occasion, were to feast on the tiny. A copy of it lies beside me now, though, unfortunately, I did not examine it when I sat down to dinner. Last, but not least, Percy's pastry-cooks, Messrs Buszard, designed a seven-tiered birthday-cake, surrounded on its lowermost plateau by one-and-twenty sugar-figures, about a quarter life-size, and each of them bearing on high a silver torch.