His tongue was dipped in "balm of a thousand flowers," and it was like the roll of one of Beethoven's symphonies to hear him read the hardest Bible names, Jechonias, Zerubbabel and Tiglath-pileser.

It was worth all the salary paid him to see the way he lifted his pocket-handkerchief to his eyelids.
But that brother, without knowing it, got through in six weeks.

He had sold out his entire stock of goods, and ought to have shut up shop.
Congregations enjoy flowers and well-folded pocket-handkerchiefs for occasional desserts, but do not like them for a regular meal.

The most urbane elder was sent to the minister to intimate that the Lord was probably calling him to some other field, but the elder was baffled by the graciousness of his pastor, and unable to discharge his mission, and after he had for an hour hemmed and hawed, backed out.
Next, a woman with a very sharp tongue was sent to talk to the minister's wife.

The war-cloud thickened, the pickets were driven in, and then a skirmish, and after a while all the batteries were opened, and each side said that the other side lied, and the minister dropped his pocket-handkerchief and showed his claws as long as those of Nebuchadnezzar after he had been three years eating grass like an ox.