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Show "PEARLS OF THOUGHT." A German author has made a collection of mixed metaphors, which he calls pearls of thought. Some of them are worth quoting, if only as a warning of high-flown orators not to allow their grandiloquence to fly away with them altogether. "We will," cried an inspired Democrat, "burn all our ships, and with every sail unfurled, steer boldly out into the ocean of freedom!" Even that flight is surpassed by an effort of Justice Minister Hye, who, in 1818, in a speech to the Vienna students, impressively declared: "The chariot of the Revolution is rolling along and gnashing its teeth as it rolls." A pan-Germanist Mayor of a Rhineland corporation rose still higher in an address to the Emperor. He said: "No Austria, no Prussia, one only Germany, such were the words the mouth of your imperial Majesty has always had in its eye." We have heard of the mouth having an eyetooth, but never before of the mouth's eye. But there are even literary men who can not open their mouths "without putting their foot in it." Professor Johannes Scherr is an example of such. In a criticism on ?? lyrics he writes: "Out of the dark regions of philosophical problems the poet suddenly lets swarms of songs dive up carrying far-flashing pearls of thought in their beaks." Songs and beaks are certainly related to one another, but were never seen in that incongruous connection before. A German preacher, speaking of a repentant girl, said: "She knelt in the temple of her interior and prayed fervently," a feat no India rubber doll could narrate. The German parliamentary oratory of the present day affords many example of metaphor mixture, but two must ?? Count Frankenberg is the author of them. A few years ago he pointed out to his countrymen the necessity of "seizing the stream of Time by the forelock," and in the last session he told the Minister of War that if he really thought the French were seriously attached to peace, he had better resign office and "return to his paternal oxen." The Count had no doubt the poet's paterna rura in his mind at the time. But none of these pearls of thought and expression in Fatherland surpass the speech of the immortal Joseph Prudhomme on being presented with a sword of honor by the company he commanded in the National Guard of France "Gentlemen," said he, "this sword is the brightest day of my life!"-?? |