He can scarcely keep the wolf from the door. Strike while the
iron is hot. Murray's eloquence never blazed into sudden flashes,
but its clear, placid, and mellow splendor was never overclouded.
The metaphor is the commonest figure of speech. Our language is a sort
of burying-ground of faded metaphors. Look up in the dictionary the
etymology of such words as _obvious, ruminating, insuperable, dainty,
ponder,_ etc., and you will see that they got their present meanings
through metaphors which have now so faded that we no longer recognize them.
Sometimes we get into trouble by introducing two comparisons in the same
sentence or paragraph, one of which contradicts the other.
Thus should we say "Pilot us through the wilderness of life" we
would introduce two figures of speech, that of a ship being
piloted and that of a caravan in a wilderness being guided,
which would contradict each other. This is called a "mixed metaphor."
3. Allusion. Sometimes a metaphor consists in a reference or allusion
to a well known passage in literature or a fact of history.
_Examples_: Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, we Sinais climb and
know it not.
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