It has been truly said that the abilities of man must fall short on one side or other, like too scanty a blanket when you are in bed: if you pull it upon your shoulders, you leave your feet bare; if you thrust it down upon your feet, your shoulders are uncovered. The man, we are told, who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors, is like a potato—the only good belonging to him being underground.
A man at a dinner in evening dress has been likened to a conundrum: you can’t tell whether he is a waiter or a guest. A Yankee, describing a lean opponent, said: ‘That man doesn’t amount to a sum in arithmetic; add him up, and there’s nothing to carry.’ An American critic in reviewing a poem, said: ‘The rhythm sounds like turnips rolling over a barn-floor, while some lines appear to have been measured with a yard-stick, and others with a ten-foot pole.’
An amusing illustration was given by a parent when asked by his boy, ‘What is understood by experimental and natural philosophy?’ The answer was: ‘If any one wants to borrow money, that is experimental philosophy. If the other man knocks him down, that is natural philosophy.’ Curious and comical illustrations seem natural to many children. A little girl, suffering from the mumps, declared she felt as though a headache had slipped down into her neck. ‘Mamma,’ said another youngster, alluding to a man whose neck was a series of great rolls of flesh, ‘that man’s got a double-chin on the back of his neck.’ A little three-year-old, in admiring her baby brother, is said to have exclaimed: ‘He’s got a boiled head, like papa.’
Talking of curious similes—among the southern languages of India is the Teloogoo or Telinga, so rough in pronunciation that a traveller of the nation speaking it before a ruler of Bokhara, admitted that its sound resembled ‘the tossing of a lot of pebbles in a sack.’ A simile for scarlet stockings is firehose—laughter is the sound you hear when your hat blows off—and trying to do business without advertising is said to be ‘like winking at a girl in the dark.’ An unpoetical Yankee has described ladies’ lips as the glowing gateway of beans, pork, sauer-kraut, and potatoes. This would provoke Marryat’s exclamation of, ‘Such a metaphor I never met afore.’ Much more complimentary was the old darkey’s neat reply to a beautiful young lady whom he offered to lift over the gutter, and who insisted she was too heavy. ‘Lor, missy,’ said he, ‘I’se used to lifting barrels of sugar.’ Wit from a man’s mouth is like a mouse in a hole; you may watch the hole all day, and no mouse come out; but by-and-by, when no one is looking for it, out pops the mouse and streams across the parlour.
Marrying a woman for her money, says a philosopher, is very much like setting a rat-trap and baiting it with your own finger.
An American writer says: ‘A man with one idea always puts me in mind of an old goose trying to hatch out a paving-stone.’ An editor’s simile of man’s career is summed up in the lines: ‘Man’s a vapour full of woes, starts a paper, busts, and goes.’
We all recollect how the Bath waters were associated in Weller’s mind with the ‘flavour of warm flat-irons.’ The humorist who created that character was often reminded of a printer’s parenthesis by the appearance of a bow-legged child; and the elongated pupils of a cat’s eyes before a bright light were likened by him to ‘two notes of admiration.’
Just as children call a locomotive ‘a puff-puff,’ savages will use sounding similes to supply the lack of language. The war-rockets sent amongst the Ashantees soon became known as ‘shoo-shoos,’ to describe their hissing; and we have heard that a fieldpiece firing shell was referred to by some of the Zulus as a ‘boom—byby;’ the first representing the report of the gun, the second the explosion of the projectile.
To touch on the poetic and romantic style of similes. Moore, if we rightly recollect, sings of ‘rose-leaves steeped in milk’ as a simile for a beautiful complexion. One of the gallant poets of France wrote of Mary Queen of Scots that her complexion was ‘clear as a white egg with a blush on it;’ and it certainly is probable that Elizabeth was as jealous of Mary’s wonderful complexion as of her claims to the English throne. Beauty has been called a solitary kingdom. Another writer says: ‘The red, white, and blue—the red cheeks, white teeth, and blue eyes of a lovely girl are as good a flag as a young soldier in the battle of life can fight for.’ A German poet refers to a fishing-rod as being typical of a young girl. He says: ‘The eyes are the hooks, the smile the bait, the lover the gudgeon, and marriage the butter in which he is fried.’ Matrimony has been well likened to a barque in which two souls venture forth upon life’s stormy sea with only their own frail help to aid them; the well-doing of their craft rests with themselves.
A French wit of a post-office turn of mind evolves the following: ‘A married woman is a letter which has reached its address. A young girl is a letter not yet addressed.’