A Series of Analogies

One of the strong¬est methods of developing a thought into an expos itory paragraph is by the use of a series of analogies organized according to the coOrdinate type. The following is an example : All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, have ruts and grooves in their minds into which their con¬versation is perpetually sliding. Did you never, in riding through the woods of a still June evening, sud¬denly feel that you had passed into a warm stratum of air, and in a minute or two strike the chill layer of atmosphere beyond ? Did you never, in cleaving the green waters of the Back Bay. . . find yourself in a tepid streak, a narrow, local gulf-stream,. . . . through which your glistening shoulders soon flashed, to bring you back to the cold realities of full-sea tem¬perature? Just so, in talking with any of the charac¬ters above referred to, one not unfrequently finds a sudden change in the style of the conversation. - OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table