Caucasian proverbs rarely deal with verbal abstractions, personified virtues or vague intellectual generalizations. They present their ideas in hard, sharp-edged crystals rather than in weak verbal solutions, and their similes, metaphors and analogies are as distinct, clear-cut and tangible as it is possible to make them. The German proverb, "He who grasps too much lets much fall," would die a natural death in the Caucasus in a week, because it defies what Tyndall calls "mental presentation:" it is not pictorial enough; but let its spirit take on a Caucasian body, introduce it to the world as "You can't hold two watermelons in one hand," and it becomes immortal. Vivid imagery is perhaps the most marked characteristic of Caucasian proverbs. Wit, wisdom and grace may all occasionally be dispensed with, but pictorial effect, the possibility of clear mental presentation, is a _sine qua non_. Aiming primarily at this, the mountaineer says of an impudent man, "He has as much shame as an egg has hair;" of a garrulous one, "He has no bone in his tongue" or "His tongue is always wet;" of a spendthrift, "Water does not stand on a hillside;" and of a noble family in reduced circumstances, "It is a decayed rag, but it is silk." All these metaphors are clear, vivid and forcible, and the list of such proverbs might be almost indefinitely extended. With all their vividness of imagery, however, Caucasian sayings are sometimes as mysterious and unintelligible as the darkest utterances of the Delphian Oracle. Take, by way of illustration, the enigmatical proverb, "He lets his hasty-pudding stand over night, hoping that it will learn to talk." Only the rarest penetration would discover in this seemingly absurd statement a satire upon the man who has a disagreeable confession to make or an unpleasant message to deliver, and who puts it off until to-morrow, hoping that the duty will then be easier of performance. Again: what would a West European make of such a proverb as the following: "If I had known that my father was going to die, I would have traded him off for a cucumber"? Our English cousins, with their characteristic adherence to facts as literally stated, would very likely cite it as a shocking illustration of the filial irreverence and ingratitude of Caucasian children; but an American, more accustomed to the rough humor of grotesque statement, would see at once that it was not to be "taken for cash," and would understand and appreciate its force when he found its meaning to be that it is better to dispose of a perishable article at half price than to lose it altogether--better to sell your father for a cucumber than have him die on your hands.