derstanding usually can be improved by means of a
comparison. We can form an image of an object as soon as we know what it
is like.

If I wished you to form an image of an okapi, a lengthy description would
give you a less vivid picture than the statement that it was a horselike
animal, having stripes similar to those of a zebra. If an okapi were as
well known to you as is a horse, the name alone would call up the proper
image, and no comparison would be necessary. By means of it we are enabled
to picture the unfamiliar. In this case the comparison is literal.

If the comparison is imaginative rather than literal, our language becomes
figurative, and usually takes the form of a simile or metaphor. Similes
and metaphors are of great value in rendering thought clear. They make
language forceful and effective, and they may add much to the beauty of
expression.

We may speak of an object as being like another, or as acting like
another. If the comparison is imaginative rather than literal, and is
directly stated, the expression is a simile. Similes are introduced by
_like, as_, etc.

He fought like a lion.
The river wound like a serpent around the mountains.

If two things are essentially different, but yet have a common quality,
their _implied comparison_ is a metaphor. A metaphor takes the form of a
statement that one is the other.

"He was a lion in the fight."
"The river wound its serpent course."

Sometimes inanimate objects, abstract ideas, or the lower animals
are given the attributes of human beings. Such a figure is called
personification, and is in fact a modified metaphor, since it is based
upon some resemblance of the lower to the higher.

This music crept by me upon the waters.

Time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he is worth to
season.
Nay, he's a thief, too; have you not heard men say,
That time comes stealing on by night and day?

--Shakespeare.

+30. Use of Figures of Speech.+--The three figures of speech, simile,
metaphor, and personification, are more frequently used than are the
others. Figures of speech are treated in a later chapter, but some
suggestions as to their use will be of value to beginners.

1. Never write for the purpose of using figures of speech. Nearly
everything that we need to say can be well expressed in plain, bare
English, and the ability to express our thoughts in this way is the
essential thing. If a figure