Explore "Memoirs of a Midget" by Walter de la Mare on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
And then -- well, life plays strange tricks. In a week or two London had swallowed me up. How many times, I wonder, had I tried in fancy to picture Mrs. Monnerie's town house. How romantic an edifice fancy had made of it. Impressive in its own fashion, it fell far short of these ignorant dreams. It was No. 2 of about forty, set side by side, their pillared porticoes fronting a prodigious square. Its only "garden," chiefly the resort of cats, children, nursemaids, an old whiskered gentleman in a bath chair, and sparrows, was visible to every passerby through a spearheaded palisade of railings. Broad paving-stones skirted its areas, and over each descent of steps hung a bell-pull.
On cloudless days the sun filled this square like a tank with a dry glare and heat in which even my salamanderish body sometimes gasped like a fish out of water. When rain fell out of the low, grey skies, and the scaling plane-trees hissed and the sparrows chirped, my spirits seemed to sink into my shoes. And fair or foul, London soot and dust were enemies alike to my eyes, my fingers, and my nose.