Explore "The Burning City" by Hjalmar Soderberg on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Through the two windows with their bright lattice-figured curtains the level sunlight of the winter morning falls in two slanting oblong quadrilaterals on the soft green carpet, and in the warm sunny spaces a little boy skips and dances. He knows but little of the world as yet. He knows he is little and is going to be big, but he does not know either that he has been born or that he will die. He knows he is four and will soon be five, but he does not know what is meant by "a year"; he still measures time only into yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
"Papa," he suddenly exclaims to his father, who has just finished breakfast and lighted his first cigar of the day -- he being a person to measure time with cigars -- "papa, I dreamed so many things last night! I dreamed about the whole room! I dreamed about the chairs and the green carpet and the mirror and the clock and the stove and the shutters and the cupboards."