Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
O. Henry
Full of apathy as a territorial delegate during the chaplain’s prayer.Blacker than a raven in a coal mine.Blinking like a disreputable, drunken owl.Boomed like a split trombone.Breathing like a second-hand bicycle pump.Good a chance to win as a man learning to play poker on an ocean steamer.Clatter like a churn-dasher dabbling in buttermilk.Clear as the water in trout pools.Crying like Niobe or Niagara.Dangerous as a machine gun.Ambiguous … blue eyes like the china dog on the mantel piece.Served as fast as you throw the five baseballs at the colored gentleman’s head.Put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear.Fits you like a flannel washed in hot suds.Followed like a child after the Pied Piper.Glaring like a lion in a trap.Grand as floor-walkers.Handsome as a new stake-rope on a thirty-dollar pony.Helpless as a turtle on its back.Immovable as a setter at the scent of quail.Gave a short laugh like the closing of a padlock.Lay like a bank of stage snow.Lined like the rind of a cantaloupe.He looked like a composite picture of five thousand orphans too late to catch a picnic steamboat.Loose as the wrapper of a two-for-fiver.Meditative, like a girl trying to decide which dress to wear to the party.Merry as an alimony bell.Musical as the holes of a flute without the flute.Make a noise like an assessment.Pockets … looked like a pool table’s after a fifteen-ball run.Polite as wax.Love should be as private a sentiment as a toothbrush.Protruding, like the clue to a Lilliputian murder mystery.Puffed like a leaky steam pipe.Reclined like some vacuous beauty lounging in a guarded harem.Rising in the middle of it like a lump of self-raising dough.Go round and round like Catherine wheels.Shuddered like some woman’s overfat pug when a street dog bristles up at him.Shun as moles shun light.Slick as soap grease.Softly as a burglar goes.Stepping softly like a scout.Soothed like the music of a tom-tom.Stay … about as long as a tenderfoot would stick on an untamed bronco.Still as a graveyard.A good story is like a bitter pill with the sugar coating inside of it.Thick as two body-snatchers.Steamer …
Tore its way out like a savage sawfish.Tosses you about like cork crumbs in wine opened by an unfeed waiter.Transparent as mica.Unapproachable as a star.Uncomfortable as a raw oyster served with sweet pickles.Unsullied in life and deed as a holy saint.Up and down like a milk punch in the shaker.Voice like a coyote with bronchitis.Wander like a lost soul in a Sam Lloyd puzzle.Windy as a dog-day in Kansas.Working like the gills of a fish.Yellow as a Chinaman.