The following text is adapted from George Eliot’s 1860 novel The Mill on the Floss. After quarrelling with Tom Tolliver, Bob Jakin has just thrown his much cherished pocketknife, a gift from Tom, onto the ground in an attempt to spite Tom.
[Bob’s] very fingers sent entreating thrills that he would go and clutch that familiar rough buck’s-horn handle, which they had so often grasped for mere affection, as it lay idle in his pocket. And there were two blades, and they had just been sharpened: What is life without a pocket-knife to him who has once tasted a higher existence? No: To throw the handle after the hatchet is a comprehensible act of desperation, but to throw one’s pocket-knife after an implacable friend is clearly in every sense a hyperbole, or throwing beyond the mark.
[Bob’s] very fingers sent entreating thrills that he would go and clutch that familiar rough buck’s-horn handle, which they had so often grasped for mere affection, as it lay idle in his pocket. And there were two blades, and they had just been sharpened: What is life without a pocket-knife to him who has once tasted a higher existence? No: To throw the handle after the hatchet is a comprehensible act of desperation, but to throw one’s pocket-knife after an implacable friend is clearly in every sense a hyperbole, or throwing beyond the mark.