Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare — Read

Those last few days of August dragged on -- days of a burning, windless heat. Yet, as days, I enjoyed them. On some upper branch of my family tree must have flourished the salamander. Indeed I think I should have been a denizen of Venus rather than of this colder, darker planet. I sat on my balcony, basking in the hot sunshine, my thoughts darting hither and thither like flies under a ceiling -- those strange, winged creatures that ever seem to be attempting to trace out in their flittings the starry "Square of Pegasus. " In spite of my troubles and forebodings, and fleeting panics, my inward mind was calm. I carefully packed away my few little valuables. The very notion of food gave me nausea, but that I determined to conquer, since of course to become, at either extreme, a slave to one's stomach, is a folly.

The noise and tramplings of the men in the rooms beneath never ceased, until Night brought quiet. The Sale lasted for two days. A stale and clouded air ascended even into my locked bedroom from the human beings (with their dust and tobacco and perfumes and natural presences) collected together in the heat of the great dining-room. A hum, a murmur, the scuffling of feet toiling downstairs with some heavy and cumbrous burden, the cries of the auctioneer, the coarse voices and laughter, the tinkle of glass -- the stretching hours seemed endless; and every minute of them knelled the fate of some beloved and familiar object. I was glad my father couldn't hear the bidding, and sorry that perhaps he did not know that the most valuable of his curios -- how valuable I was to learn later -- was safely hidden away in an upper room. So passed my birthday -- the twentieth -- nor tapped me on the shoulder with, "Ah, but, my dear, just you wait till I come again!"