Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1886 — Apt Similitudes. [ARTICLE]

Apt Similitudes.

There is nothing the .mind enjoys, after all, Hke getting an idea, and getting it quick—which is only giving in a nutshell the gist of Herbet Spencer's admirable essay on “Style.” A friend was telling me the other day that he had a new cookr He said (he is a small man), “I am afraid of her. She is as big as a bonded warehouse. ” I saw in a paper lately that somebody expressed himself as being “dry as a covered bridge.” And how can we declare~the fineness of anything so well as by saying it is as “fine as a fiddle?” The alliteration, no doubt, helps, but it does not count for very much. You could not substitute fish, or feather, or fife, or flamingo, though each is fine after a fashion. Nothing will serve but a “fiddle,” with its preternatural shine of varnish, its perky- angles and curves —‘pointed like a saucy nose—with perhaps (but this is venturing into deep psychological water) a suggestion subconscious of the jaunty fiddler with his airs and graces, dressed aS if just out of a bandbox.. “Lively as a flea” seems good and lively, but an old sea captain of mine used to 'say,. “he flew around like a flea in a hot skillet.” 1 “Like a bumble-bee in a bass drum” describes the activity of a different Sort of tern * perment— Atlantic Monthly. , i » A born musician has a great advant age over one who is noi yet bom.