The household surroundings of our ancestors readily supplied them with many apt similes readily understood by all. Of these we may instance: "As thin as a rake," "as round as a tub," "as cold as ice," "as dull as ditch-water," "as rough as a nutmeg-grater," "as hard as iron," "as smooth as a pebble," "as deep as a well," "as cool as a cucumber," "as soft as wool," "as hard as nails," "as stiff as a poker," "as light as a feather," "as flat as a pancake," "as dry as a bone," and "as fresh as paint." "As naked as a needle" occurs in "Piers Plowman," the only place we have come across it. "As dead as a door-nail" no doubt owes some of its popularity to its alliteration; it is sometimes "as dead as a dore-tree." In "Wit Restored," 1658, we find, "As dead as a dore-nayle"; and in "2 King Henry IV." Falstaff exclaims, "What! is the old king dead?" and Pistol replies, "As nail in door." In a much older work than either of these we find, in the description of a tournament: "Thurth the bold bodi he bar him to the erthe as ded as dornayl"; while another manuscript reads: "Feith withoute fait is feblere than nought, and as ded as a dorenail"--faith without works is dead. Piers Plowman says on this, "Feith withouten the feet is right nothyng worthi, and as dead as a dore-tree." The door-tree is the door-post, once part of a living tree, but now dead; while the door-nails are the equally moribund nails that in mediæval days studded the surface of the door. Other similes from the furniture or other details of the house or its surroundings were, "as clear as a bell," referring to its tone, or "as sound as a bell," referring to its freedom from cracks that would destroy its sounding powers. We also have "as hot as toast," or "as crusty as a houshold loaf." "As clean as a whistle," or perhaps "as clear as a whistle." Those who have seen a country boy making a whistle from a bit of elder or other pithy or hollow wood, and then seen the final peeling of the bark and the revealing of the light green of the spotless underwood thereby, would give their vote probably in favour of "clean." It has been suggested again that the word means empty, a whaler that returns unsuccessfully from the fishing-ground being technically called "clean." On the other hand, the word "clear" may suggest either the quality of the sound or the necessity for their being no stoppage or impediment in the tube. Some will brush aside both explanations and say that the thing in question is not a whistle at all but a whittle, the big knife that butchers use, and that the notion really is that the thing in question, whatever it may be that calls forth the comparison, is cut off as cleanly and clearly as if it had been done by a whittle.