1.G 10. Rhetorical Illustrations

Rhetorical Illustrations.

You may go down to the brook under the willows and angle for the trout that everybody has been trying to catch, but in vain. You go splashing and tearing along, throwing in your pole, line and all. Do you think you can catch him that way?

No, indeed; you must begin afar oft and quietly; if need be, drawing yourself along on the grass, and perhaps even on your belly, until you come where through the quivering leaves you see the flash of the sun, and then slowly and gently you throw your line around, so that the fly on its end falls as light as a gossamer upon the placid surface of the brook. The trout will think, “ That is not a bait thrown to catch me; there is nobody there,” and he rises to the fly, takes it, and you take him. So there are thousands of persons in the world that you will take if they do not know that you are after them, but whom you could not touch if they suspected your purpose. Illustrations are in valuable for this kind of work, and there is nothing half so effective.