That a proverb should be plain in language and teaching is, we take it, by no means an essential. It rather owes often somewhat of its value to the fact that there is something in it that compels analysis, possibly awakens doubt or resistance, startles us by an apparent contradiction, and compels us to delve at some trouble to ourselves before we grasp its significance. Ray, one of the best known students of proverb-lore, realises this when he stipulates for "an instructive sentence in which more is generally designed than expressed" as his ideal. Quaint exaggeration of statement, the use of hyperbole, is often employed, and very happily, to compel attention. Some men seem to be so specially the children of fortune that they from the most untoward events gain increased advantage, and after a submergence that would drown most men emerge buoyantly from this sea of trouble and go cheerily on their way. Such are very happily described in the Arab proverb, "If you throw him into the sea he will come up with a fish in his mouth." To those who would attempt great tasks with inadequate means how truly may we say, "It is hard to sail across the sea in an eggshell." Of those who labour hard for results that bear no proportion to the effort made we may equally truly say, "He dives deep and brings up a potsherd." In France, if a man attempts a prodigious, or possibly impossible, task, it is said of him, "Il a la mer à boire," while the thoughtless or reckless man, who to avoid a slight and passing inconvenience will run imminent risk of grave misfortune, is said to jump into the river that he may escape the rain, "Il se jette à l'eau, peur de la pluie." The hyperbole employed startles and arouses the attention and drives the lesson home. It is especially characteristic of the Eastern mind, and the Bible, a book of the East, is full of examples of its use.