A few years ago in a certain part of England the weather was so
continuously beastly--that’s the term they used--that at last,
wearying of looking at the barometers day after day, week in and
week out, the entire inhabitants of a certain seaport town, in
sheer disgust, gathered up their weather-glasses and dumped them
into the old junk shops. Both the weather and the barometers
flooded them with disagreeable suggestions. They could not do
away with the weather, but they could with their barometers
that seemed to serve no better purpose than to accentuate their
discontent.--ROBERT MACDONALD.
(3103)
* * * * *
Sometimes a word or phrase will do in literature what a sketch will
do in charcoal, defining a character and suggesting a whole line
of possibilities. An instance of this is in the following from
_Everybody’s Magazine_:
After a certain jury had been out an inordinately long time on
a very simple case, they filed into the court-room, and the
foreman told the judge they were unable to agree upon a verdict.
The latter rebuked them, saying the case was a very clear one,
and remanded them back to the jury-room for a second attempt,
adding, “If you are there too long I will have to send you in
twelve suppers.”
The foreman, in a rather irritated tone, spoke up and said: “May
it please your honor, you might send in eleven suppers and one
bundle of hay.”
(3104)
See NEGATIVE TEACHING.
=Suggestion, Unhealthy=--See TALKING AND SICKNESS.