The Crown of Wild Olive Page 41
by John Ruskin
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.
_Sentence_ out of letter from May (who is staying with Isabel just nowat Cassel), dated 15th June, 1877:--
"I am reading the Ethics with a nice Irish girl who is staying here, andshe's just as puzzled as I've always been about the fire-flies, and weboth want to know so much.--Please be a very nice old Lecturer, and tellus, won't you?"
Well, May, you never were a vain girl; so could scarcely guess that Imeant them for the light, unpursued vanities, which yet blind us,confused among the stars. One evening, as I came late into Siena, thefire-flies were flying high on a stormy sirocco wind,--the starsthemselves no brighter, and all their host seeming, at moments, to fadeas the insects faded.