Letter LXX

Corduroys come early into my life,--their color and the queer earthy
smell of those which particularly concerned me: because I was picked up
from a fall and tenderly handled by a rough working-man so clothed, whom
I regarded for a long time afterward as an adorable object. He and I
lived to my recognition of him as a wizened, scrubby, middle-aged man,
but remained good friends after the romance was over. I don't know when
the change in my sense of beauty took place as regards him.

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.