HOW BOOKS SHOULD START part 1

In this strange 'goose-weather', when even the snow and the black-fringed clouds seem like old theatrical properties, dead players' cast off rags, 'the complexion of a murderer in a bandbox, consisting of a large piece of burnt cork, and a coal-black Peruke', and when the wind is so cold that it seems like an empty theatre's 'Sea, consisting of a dozen large waves, the tenth a little bigger than ordinary, and a little damaged', I thought of those medicines that were advertised for Melancholy, in the Anatomy of this disease, of mummies made medicine, and of the profits of Dust-sifting.

Source: page 1 of 'English Eccentrics' by Edith Sitwell