What, you there, mousie! No; I won't tell either Sibyl or you
about the fireflies, nor a word more about anything else you ought
to be little fireflies yourselves, and find your way in twilight
by your own wits.
ISABEL. But you said they burned, you know?
L. Yes; and you may be fireflies that way too, some of you, before
long, though I did not mean that. Away with you, children. You
have thought enough for to-day.
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION
Sentence out of letter from May (who is staying with Isabel just
now at Cassel), dated 15th June, 1877:--
"I am reading the Ethics with a nice Irish girl who is staying
here, and she's just as puzzled as I've always been about the
fireflies, and we both want to know so much.--Please be a very
nice old Lecturer, and tell us, won't you?"
Well, May, you never were a vain girl; so could scarcely guess
that I meant them for the light, unpursued vanities, which yet
blind us, confused among the stars. One evening, as I came late
into Siena, the fireflies were flying high on a stormy sirocco
wind,--the stars themselves no brighter, and all their host
seeming, at moments, to fade as the insects faded.
The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Ethics of the Dust, by John Ruskin
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