Elsie glared at him. "Do you always have to be so literal?"Homer gave her question some though, then said, "Maybe it's a coal mining thing. If you don't look at the roof literally, it might fall literally on top of your head."
The miner's job would be as much beyond my power as it would be to perform on the flying trapeze or to win the Grand National. I am not a manual labourer and please God I never shall be one, but there are some kinds of manual work that I could do if I had to. At a pitch I could be a tolerable road-sweeper or an inefficient gardener or even a tenth-rate farm hand. But by no conceivable amount of effort or training could I become a coal-miner; the work would kill me in a few weeks.George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), pp. 32-33 (1st U.S. ed.; pub. in England in 1937)
