Going Into Society

"Society, taken in the lump, is all dwarfs (…) And when you've no more left to give, they'll laugh at you to your face…"
A man sets up a circus in a respectable neighbourhood and draws an audience with the main attraction: a dwarf, named Mr. Chops. One day, Mr. Chops wins the lottery and leaves. But life outside the circus is not as he imagined.
Going into Society is a dark story about naivety, humiliation and the disappointing importance of money. It is believed that Vladimir Nabokov's short story The Potato Elf (1929) about a dwarf named Fred who works in a circus, was inspired by this classic Charles Dickens story.