But my present object is simply to give what may be called the natural
history of metaphor, comparison, image, trope, and the like, whether
imagery be employed by an uneducated husbandman, or by a great orator
and writer. Many readers may recollect the anecdote of the New Hampshire
farmer, who was once complimented on the extremely handsome appearance
of a horse which he was somewhat sullenly urging on to perform its work.
"Yaas," was the churlish reply, "the critter looks well enough, but then
he is as slow as--as--as--well, as slow as cold molasses." This
perfectly answers to Bacon's definition of imagination, as "thought
immersed in matter." The comparison is exactly on a level with the
experience of the person who used it. He had seen his good wife, on so
many bitter winter mornings, when he was eager for his breakfast, turn
the molasses-jug upside down, and had noted so often the reluctance of
the congealed sweetness to assume its liquid nature, that the thing had
become to him the visible image of the abstract notion of slowness of
movement. An imaginative dramatist or novelist, priding himself on the
exactness with which he represented character, could not have invented a
more appropriate comparison to be put into the mouth of an imagined New
England farmer.

The only objection to such rustic poets is, that a comparatively few
images serve them for a lifetime; and one tires of such "originals"
after a few days' conversation has shown the extremely limited number of
apt illustrations they have added to the homely poetry of agricultural
life. The only person, belonging to this class, that I ever met, who
possessed an imagination which was continually creative in quaint
images, was a farmer by the name of Knowlton, who had spent fifty years
in forcing some few acres of the rocky soil of Cape Ann to produce
grass, oats, potatoes, and, it may be added, those ugly stone walls
which carefully distinguish, at the cape, one patch of miserable sterile