To come out at the little end is to be worsted, to come to grief.
1805. I am very much afraid I shall come out at the little end of the horn.—Balt. Ev. Post, July 5, p. 2/5.
1817. If the farmers and the traders, instead of attending closely to their proper callings, are busy here and there, they will assuredly “come out of the little end of the horn.”—Mass. Spy, Feb. 19.
1828. [The Portland Argus] has fairly worked itself out of the little end of the horn.—The Yankee, p. 237.
1836. Everywhere I touched was pizen, and I came out at the leetle end of the horn.—W. T. Porter, ed., ‘A Quarter Race in Kentucky,’ etc., p. 24 (1846). (Italics in the original.)
1847. Why, colonel, I see you have had a skrimmage. How did you make it! You didn’t come out at the little eend of the horn, did you?—T. B. Thorpe, ‘The Big Bear of Arkansas: Jones’s Fight,’ p. 37 (Phila.).
1852. I’m afraid we are coming out at the little end of the horn, Major.—Seba Smith (‘Major Downing’), ‘My Thirty Years Out of the Senate,’ p. 395 (1860).
1852. We have commenced at the little end of the horn, and by and bye we will come out at the big end.—Elder John Taylor, at the Mormon Tabernacle, Aug. 22: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ i. 16.
1855. You used to hear brother Joseph [Smith] tell about this people being crowded into the little end of the horn, and if they kept straight ahead they were sure to come out at the big end.—Brigham Young, April 8: id., ii. 267.
1857. He [J. C. Fremont] came out at the little end of the horn: he was not elected [President].—John Taylor at the Bowery, Salt Lake City, Aug. 9: id., v. 120.
*** The phrase may be of English origin. It is suggested by old pictures relating to suretiship: see Notes and Queries, 7 S. iv. 323; vii. 257, 386.
