their childhood.

I might have a misgiving that I am 'meandering' in stopping to say
this, but that it brings me to remark that I build these
conclusions, in part upon my own experience of myself; and if it
should appear from anything I may set down in this narrative that
I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a
strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of
these characteristics.

Looking back, as I was saying, into the blank of my infancy, the
first objects I can remember as standing out by themselves from a
confusion of things, are my mother and Peggotty. What else do I
remember? Let me see.


There comes out of the cloud, our house - not new to me, but quite
familiar, in its earliest remembrance. On the ground-floor is
Peggotty's kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house
on a pole, in the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog-
kennel in a corner, without any dog; and a quantity of fowls that
look terribly tall to me, walking about, in a menacing and
ferocious manner. There is one cock who gets upon a post to crow,
and seems to take particular notice of me as I look at him through
the kitchen window, who makes me shiver, he is so fierce. Of the
geese outside the side-gate who come waddling after me with their
long necks stretched out when I go that way, I dream at night: as
a man environed by wild beasts might dream of lions.

Here is a long passage - what an enormous perspective I make of it!