Money slips from the fingers like a water-melon seed, travels without legs, and flies without wings.
It is the lot of humanity to err at times, as the drunken man said when he mistook the pig-pen for his bedroom.
A good deed will stick out, with an inclination to spread, like the tail of a peacock.
You might as well undertake to whistle a grape-vine from a white oak, as to induce a girl to relinquish her lover.
SIMILES.—671.
As big as all out of doors.
As dry as the clerk of a lime-kiln.
As long as a thanksgiving sermon.
As crooked as a Virginian fence.
As straight as a loon's leg.
As straight as a shingle.
As sharp as the little end of nothing.
As slick as greased lightning.
As swelling as a basket of chips.
As happy as a clam at high water.
As tight as the bark of a tree.
As crazy as a bed-bug.
As mad as all wrath.
As wrathy as a militia officer on a training-day.
As proud as a tame turkey.
As melancholy as a Quaker meeting-house by moonlight.
As useless as whistling psalms to a dead horse.
Like all nature.
Like all fury.
Like all possessed.
Thrashing round, like a short-tailed bull in fly-time.
Head and tail up, like chicken cocks in laying-time.