Fate waiting in the wings
All aglow, this bright afternoon when two characters cross paths, blush, and entwine fates. Impossible to have any intimation on...
Rain refuge
It happens to be such a morning as I write this. The first chill, misty, rainy morning we've had in...
To listen as to a recurrent music
What a beautiful description of listening out for someone's voice. Despite Adam's listening for her voice so, it doesn't yet...
As poor as…
Never thought of rats as being poor, but I like the simile, more compelling than the standard 'as poor as...
Worth the expense
George Eliot can be pithy, here singling out someone as being unworthy of the bullet a character might like to...
One foot in, one foot out
A wry response to the observation by his future brother-in-law regarding Mr. Casaubon's suitability for marriage. The old dry-as-dust scholar-curmudgeon...
Clear-eyed endurance
Something I admire in others but cannot pretend to have fully mastered, though am fortunate in not having been required...
Of humbug and hypocrisy
George Eliot makes a bold statement about wealthy Mr. Glegg's goodness of heart, until you get to the closing clause. ...
Swimming in circles
A fine simile for a wife who after a good stretch of marriage, still presses all the wrong buttons with...
The feeling of a cur
Mrs Glegg, as you can see from this simile, is not the most empathic or kind of characters. Here she...
Brother and sister
George Eliot's Mill on the Floss is largely about the relationship between Tom and Maggie Tulliver, brother and sister. Her...
Well-seasoned meerschaum
This is part of a description of the village schoolroom where the sometimes compassionate, sometimes ascerbic schoolmaster Bartle Massey tries...
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