C. What geometrical figure best expresses the fundamental image of (1) a certain church interior that you have in mind? (2) a baseball field? (3) a face? (4) a room? (5) a picnic ground? (6) a gymnasium floor? (7) a park? (8) a skating rink? (9) a Mexican hat? (10) a swimming pool?

D. How is the effect of distance conveyed in the following? (Gloster is blind.)

Edgar. Come on, sir; here's the place. Stand still.
How fearful

And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles. Half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade !
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
The fishermen that walk upon the beach
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark
Diminish'd to her cock; her cock a buoy

Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge,
That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more,
Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.

E. Try to express by some comparison the fundamental image for (1) the peculiar way in which a certain person walks, (2) the peculiar manner of speaking that you have noticed in some person, (3) the way in which a heavy coach climbs a hill, (4) the movements of a very large, clumsy person, (5) the way in which a winning automobile, runner, or race-horse comes down the home stretch,

(6) the way in which a person picks his way across a muddy street, (7) the way in which a crowd enter a hall when the doors are first opened, (8) the approach of a thunder-storm, (9) the rising of the full moon, (10) the handwriting of some friend of yours, (11) the way in which a blue jay looks at you.

Number and Selection of Details.

63. Evidently the number of details admitted to a description depends upon the purpose of the description.

(1) If the purpose is to give the reader complete information, as when a geographer describes a continent, a scientist a rare plant or animal, a traveller a strange country, we expect a long inventory of details, both distinctive of the object and common to the class to which the object belongs.

(2) If the purpose is to make it possible for the reader to identify with certainty the object described,

as when a lost article is described to the finder that ownership may be proved, a street to a stranger trying to find a certain house in a large city, a fugitive from justice to an officer of the law, a house to an architect that he may make plans for another like it, we expect only details that are distinctive, or peculiar to the object described.

(3) In most descriptions, however, the purpose is not to give information more or less complete, nor to insure accurate identification; it is simply to convey the writer's impression of the object, to let the reader know what feelings and moods were aroused in the presence of the object, and what, in a general way, the thing described was like.

With this purpose in mind the writer does

not aim at complete description. He selects the details that give the impression, or that create the mood, and lets the rest go. Sometimes a single characteristic will suggest to the reader all that is needed, as when Homer compresses a description of Ulysses into the single epithet "crafty." Hawthorne suggests whole pages of detail when he speaks of the "black, moody brow" of Septimius Felton. The reader's imagination supplies what is missing.

The writer may, however, give as many details as he pleases in conveying his impressions, provided all of the details, however minute, count towards the effect desired. In Ruskin's description of St. Mark's the reader is helped to some sense of the profusion of beauty in the cathedral by the unusually large number of things mentioned and the splendor of the diction employed. He may forget the details as soon as he has read them, but the impression of the cathedral's magnificence remains. In Tennyson's Mariana the details all serve to emphasize Mariana's loneliness. In Poe and Hawthorne the details of description at the outset of each tale all count toward a single impression. In the following ("When the Sap Rose," by "Q" in The Delectable Duchy), all the details of color and sound and smell suggest the coming of spring. Note also the verbs; they suggest motion- the awakening of spring.

The road toward the coast dipped-too steeply for tight boots down a wooded coombe, and he followed it, treading delicately. The hollow of the V ahead, where the hills overlapped against the pale blue, was powdered with a faint brown bloom, soon to be green an infinity of bursting buds.

The larches stretched their arms upwards, as men waking. The yellow was on the gorse, with a heady scent like a pineapple's, and between the bushes spread the gray film of coming bluebells. High up, the pines sighed along the ridge, turning paler; and far down, where the brook ran, a mad duet was going on between thrush and chaffinch "Cheer up, cheer up, Queen!" "Clip, clip, clip, and kiss me - Sweet!" one against the other.

The first consideration, then, is the purpose of the description. When once the purpose is determined the writer may employ as many details as he thinks necessary for realizing the purpose; but the careful writer will not admit to his description any detail that does not count toward the purpose that he has in mind.

In all kinds of writing it is a general principle to use the fewest means for producing the desired result. This principle is violated in description more often than in any other kind of writing. What to omit, what to leave to suggestion, is often a more important question for the writer of description than what to include.

64.

Assignments on Selection of Details.

A. From the impression produced on you by once reading, determine the purpose of each of the following descriptive passages, and then test each detail by asking what it contributes to the accomplishment of the purpose.

1.

gray,

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and
Dim with a dull imprisoned ray,
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left;
Creeping over the floor so damp,

Like a marsh's meteor lamp:
And in each pillar there is a ring,

And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,

For in these limbs its teeth remain,
With marks that will not wear away,
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which have not seen the sun to rise
For years I cannot count them o'er,
I lost their long and heavy score
When my last brother drooped and died,
And I lay living by his side.

- BYRON: Prisoner of Chillon.

2. Bill Jenks was Captain Brent's senior pilot. His skin hung on his face in folds, like that of a rhinoceros. It was very much the same color. His grizzled hair was all lengths, like a worn-out mop; his hands reminded one of an eagle's claw, and his teeth were a pine yellow.

CHURCHILL: The Crisis, p. 325.

3. I hardly know whether I am more pleased or annoyed with the catbird. Perhaps she is a little too common, and her part in the general chorus a little too conspicuous. If you are listening for the note of another bird, she is sure to be prompted to the most loud and protracted singing, drowning all other sounds; if you sit quietly down to observe a favorite or study a newcomer, her curiosity knows no bounds, and you are scanned and ridiculed from every point of observation. Yet I would not miss her; I would only subordinate her a little, make her less conspicuous. BURROUGHS: Wake-Robin.

4. Broadway is miles upon miles long, a rush of life such as I never have seen; not so full as the Strand, but so rapid.