Feb 7, 2016
The stage hero never talks in a simple, straightforward way, like a mere ordinary mortal. "You will write to me when you are away, dear, won't you?" says the heroine. A mere human being would reply: "Why, of course I shall, ducky, every day." But the stage hero is a superior creature. He says: "Dost see yonder star, sweet?" She looks up and owns that she does see yonder star; and then off he starts and drivels on about that star for full five minutes, and says he will cease to write to her when that pale star has fallen from its place amid the firmament of heaven.
Jerome K. Jerome, Stage-Land (1889)