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How to Improve the Memory
dropping of a feather from the eagle to the earth. The picture that the poet wishes to convey is the gradual coming on of night, and he fastens this point upon our minds by calling our attention to the fact that the darkness falls as slowly, gently, and noiselessly as does the soft, light feather from the bird in the air. By noting closely the similarity of the falling of darkness and the wafting downward of the feather, it will be impossible to forget that the darkness came slowly. Had the darkness suddenly fallen upon the earth, the poet would have compared it to the blowing out of a light, or the action of some quickly moving object.
Homer, in the Iliad, in order to show the vast number of the Greeks, uses this simile:
As the bees came forth continually in fresh numbers, so fresh bands of Greeks keep con-
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