Family Gossip
Family gossip is, according to the author, “a fatal enemy to family confidence.” The reasoning behind this metaphor of gossip as a destructive enemy is that nobody very much considers it such a terribly bad thing. In other words: everybody does it and that is precisely what gives it such sinister strength.
The Tortoise and the Hare
The author revisits the fable of the race between the tortoise and the hare to find a new interpretation of its moral. As a metaphor for dullness being an attribute in the form of diligently working toward a goal through a slow, but steady approach, she finds it lacking, suggesting instead a much less metaphorical moral: when racing, hares probably should not take a nap.
Don't Tell Alex Trebek
Almost a hundred years before it even existed, Augusta Webster was already knocking the point of the "interview segment" of the game show Jeopardy! through metaphor.
A person blessed with “a prodigious memory and all other brain faculties weak is like a catalogue; good for purposes of reference, but of neither use nor pleasure otherwise.”
The Greatest Virtue
Webster begins one of her essays as if it were a fairy tale, reminding the reader that once upon a time there existed “a virtue that everybody said was the most useful and wholesome and sensible and self-rewarding virtue that ever was.” She then proceeds to write a history of this virtue that situates it as a metaphorical lost treasure, anachronism and Holy Grail to be doggedly pursued. The virtue in question? Early rising.
Conceit
Continuing her theme of looking at the conventional wisdom from a contrarian perspective, the author suggests that conceit has gotten a raw deal. While admitting that it is can be an “enervating mistake” among the simpletons of the world, she also makes a strong argument for conceit as a metaphor for that drive to take risks which can result in immortal success and without which low-born greatness could achieve great heights.
