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The session being now happily inaugurated, your presiding officer of the last year has only one duty to perform before he surrenders the chair to his successor. If allowed to borrow a simile from the language of my own profession, I might liken the President of this Association to a biennial plant.
He was only beginning to collect when we had parted at school, if 'collect' is not too sacred a word: beginning to buy more truly expresses that first glutting of the bookish hunger, which, like the natural appetite, never passes in some beyond the primary utilitarian stage of 'eating to live, otherwise 'buying to read. Three years, however, works miracles of refinement in any hunger that is at all capable of culture; and it was evident, when Narcissus did open his 'Gladstone, that it had taken him by no means so long to attain that sublimation of taste which may be expressed as 'reading to buy. Each volume had that air of breeding, one might almost say by which one can always know a genuine bouquin at a glance; an alluvial richness of bloom, coming upon one like an aromatic fragrance in so many old things, in old lawns, in old flowers, old wines, and many another delicious simile.
It has already been noted that the Franchise Law of 1890 excluded Uitlanders from full burgher rights until after twenty-one years' probation. The reduction to seven years was proclaimed to be a concession to meet Mr. Chamberlain's demand. The simile, as addressed to the Volksraad and published in the journals, ran as follows:
"It's so nice having the kitchen close by," said May, "instead of way off as it was in the other house. This toast is as warm as toast" she concluded, not knowing exactly how to end her simile. "Your face looks as warm as toast, too," remarked her Father. "Yes, Papa, that's because I toasted to-night. Dinah was bringing the clothes from the lines, so she let me."
It is not a poem that can be read straight through; it is only enjoyable in moments moments of charming, minute observation, like the description of a sunbeam thrown quivering on the wall from a basin of water "which has just been poured out," lines not only charming in themselves, but finely used as a simile for Medea's agitated heart; or moments of romantic fantasy, as when the Argonauts see the eagle flying towards Prometheus, and then hear the Titan's agonized cry.
And yet, inadequate as the simile is, we may, I think, from the actions of mankind, conclude that they will consider it as much too strong; for, in the case I have put of the entertainment, is there any man so tender or poor-spirited as not to despise, and often to deride, the fiercest of these inclemencies which I have mentioned? but in our journey to the glorious mansions of everlasting bliss, how severely is every little rub, every trifling accident, lamented! and if Fortune showers down any of her heavier storms upon us, how wretched do we presently appear to ourselves and to others!
"Chiv it apre" may be applied to throwing anything, to covering it up, to lifting it, to setting it, to pushing it, to circulating, and in fact to a very great number of similar verbs. There is, I think, no rational connection between the BUNG of a barrel and an eye which has been closed by a blow. One might as well get the simile from a knot in a tree or a cork in a flask.
At the same time, I think your Lotus-and-Siren simile is rather off the point: you see, the people who ate the Lotus and listened to the Sirens paid for the gratification of ear and palate with their lives: whereas I not only have a great deal more enjoyment than they had, but am all the better for it.
Thus the passion of Mrs Honour appears natural enough, even if it were to be no otherwise accounted for; but, in reality, there was another cause of her anger; for which we must beg leave to remind our reader of a circumstance mentioned in the above simile.
Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck. But McManus's simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the Mulberry Hill cruiser.
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