I suppose, also, that many sights which have no meaning to children go, happily, quite out of memory; and that what our early years leave for us in the mind’s lavender are just the tit-bits of life, or the first blows to our intelligence—­things which did matter and mean much.

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.

In much the same way as sights that have no meaning leave no traces, so I suppose do words and sounds.  It was many years before I overheard, in the sense of taking in, a conversation by elders not meant for me:  though once, in my innocence, I hid under the table during the elders’ late dinner, and came out at dessert, to which we were always allowed to come down, hoping to be an amusing surprise to them.  And I could not at all understand why I was scolded; for, indeed, I had heard nothing at all, though no doubt plenty that was unsuitable for a child’s ears had been said, and was on the elders’ minds when they upbraided me.

Dearest, such a long-ago! and all these smallest of small things I remember again, to lay them up for you:  all the child-parentage of me whom you loved once, and will again if ever these come to you.

Bless my childhood, dearest:  it did not know it was lonely of you, as I know of myself now!  And yet I have known you, and know you still, so am the more blest.—­Good-night.