Part 7

I have spoken aloud my dream, to two very intent listeners, one of whom is convulsed anew. “A China-lantern”—will he never stop laughing. The other, “all right, auntie. You have got it right, and, if I mistake not, some other things. Though seen in a dream, it is not the less valuable tour, sought for ages. But the ancients did not have arc-light suns, to see their lanterns by, as do we. But why is the decoration set so far apart, unlike ours, that are close lantern-hung?”

“Oh, I can answer that,” says Charley. “The design is but in outline. We will some day catch a meteor, and go to inspect it closer.”

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected. ○ Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).