Page:Tales of humour and romance translated by Holcroft.djvu/213

 DEDICATION

TO MY

FOSTER-SISTER, PHILIPPINA,

never yet, my dear foster-sister, had a hit at you girls, for your attachment to the moon, for making it the plaything of your hearts, and the nest-egg round which you arrange all the other stars, when you hatch your fancies out of them. Be it so. But there are other things about which we might talk; for example, that you would rather admire and look at the good moon and its man there cleaving to it, than learn really to know them, just as you do with men beneath the moon. It is alas, no secret, dearest sister, that thousands of girls, have been both married and burried, who have considered that silver world above, as in reality nothing more than a pretty soup-plate of celestial tin, stamped with