The houses are always being torn down and built up again, the railroad cars drive slap into the midst of the city. There are barricades and scaffoldings banging everywhere. I have not been into a house, except the fat country one but something new is being done to it, and the hammerings are clattering in the passage, or a wall or steps are down, or the family is going to move. Nobody is quiet here, no more am I. The rush and restlessness pleases me, and I like, for a little, the dash of the stream. I am not received as a god, which I like too. There is one paper which goes on every morning saying I am a snob, and I don't say no. Six people were reading it at breakfast this morning, and the man opposite me popped it under the tablecloth. But the other papers roar with approbation. - Letters of Thackeray, p. 159.

5. St. Helena is a conglomeration of rocks, apparently hove, by volcanic fires, from the bosom of the ocean. It is six thousand miles from Europe, and twelve hundred miles from the nearest point of land on the coast of Africa. This gloomy rock, ten miles long and six broad, placed beneath the rays of a tropical sun, emerges like a castle from the waves, presenting to the sea, throughout its circuit, but an immense perpendicular wall, from six hundred to twelve hundred feet high. There are but three narrow openings in these massive cliffs by which a ship can approach the island. These are all strongly fortified.

-ABBOTT: Life of Napoleon.

B. What is the significance of the last sentence in the following?

As a fact, the Registrar wore a silk hat, a suit of black West of England broadcloth, a watch-chain made out of his dead wife's hair, and two large seals that clashed together when he moved. His face was wide and round, with a sanguine complexion, gray side whiskers, and a

cicatrix across the chin. He had shaved in a hurry that morning, for the wedding was early, and took place on the extreme verge of his district. His is a beautiful office — recording day by day the solemnest and most mysterious events in nature. Yet, standing at the cross-roads, between down and woodland, under an April sky full of sun and southwest wind, he threw the ugliest shadow in the landscape.Q: The Delectable Duchy.

C. What details of sound, odor, color, would you select if writing a description of a very hot, still summer's day? a blustery March day? a cold, still winter day? Try a brief description of this kind.

D. Describe a face, beginning with the general impression, emphasizing the most distinctive feature, but mentioning other features. See if from a number of photographs another person can pick out the one you have described.

E. Stand outside of a machine shop or of a sash factory and describe the different sounds that you hear.

F. For purposes of identification describe some article that you have lost, or a book or picture the name of which you have forgotten.

G. For purposes of information describe a Chinese mandarin, a new kind of pencil sharpener, a four-cell battery, the walkingbeam of an oil derrick, a ghoul, a hay-fork, a T-rail, a postal car, a cruiser, a man-of-war, a still, a canal lock, a banshee, a trap, an automobile, the interior of a switch house, the apparatus for wireless telegraphy, a spinning wheel, a Roman lamp.

65.

Assignments in Description of Voices.

A. From the following can you get a sound-image of a voice that is pleasant, and one of a voice that is unpleasant? Note carefully the phrases that suggest qualities of voice, and find, if you can, a word to express each quality suggested.

I grieve to say it, but our people, I think, have not generally agreeable voices. The marrowy organisms, with skins that shed water like the backs of ducks, with smooth surfaces neatly padded beneath the velvet linings to their singing-pipes, are not so common among us as that other pattern of humanity with angular outlines and plane surfaces, arid integuments, hair like the fibrous covering of a cocoanut in gloss and suppleness as well as color, and voices at once thin and strenuous; acidulous enough to produce effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous enough to sing duets with the katydids. I think our conversational soprano, as sometimes overheard in the cars, arising from a group of young persons, who may have taken the train at one of our great industrial centres, for instance - young persons of the female sex, we will say, who have bustled in, full-dressed, engaged in loud strident speech, and who, after free discussion, have fixed on two or more double seats, which having secured, they proceed to eat apples and hand round daguerreotypes I say I think the conversational soprano, heard under these circumstances, would not be among the allurements the old Enemy would put in requisition, were he getting up a new temptation of St. Anthony. - HOLMES: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.

B. Can you imagine from the following how Carlyle's laugh sounded?

After the most vehement tirade he would suddenly pause, throw his head back, and give as genuine and kindly a laugh as I ever heard from a human being. It was not the bitter laugh of the cynic, nor yet the big-bodied laugh of the burly joker; least of all was it the thin and rasping cackle of the dyspeptic satirist. But it was a broad, honest, human laugh, which beginning in the brain, took into its action the whole heart and diaphragm, and instantly changed the worn

face into something frank and even winning, giving to it an expression that would have won the confidence of any child. Nor did it convey the impression of an exceptional thing that had occurred for the first time that day, and might never happen again. It rather produced the effect of something habitual; of being the channel, well worn for years, by which the overflow of a strong nature was discharged. It cleared the air like thunder, and left the atmosphere sweet. It seemed to say to himself, if not to us, "Do not let us take this too seriously; it is my way of putting things. What refuge is there for a man who looks below the surface in a world like this, except to laugh now and then?" The laugh, in short, revealed the humorist; if I said the genial humorist, wearing a mask of grimness, I should hardly go too far for the impression it left. At any rate it shifted the ground, and transferred the whole matter to that realm of thought where men play with things. The instant Carlyle laughed, he seemed to take the counsel of his old friend Emerson, and to write upon the lintels of his doorway, "Whim."- HIGGINSON: Atlantic, 48:464.

C. Try describing the voice or laugh of some well-known person. Or work into one description a contrast of two very different voices. Or describe the voices in a school reading class, touching each very briefly.

66.

Assignments in Description of Sounds.

Describe in one sentence, as vividly as you can, (1) the sound made in unloading a coal wagon through a chute, (2) the sound made by the chain of a rapidly moving bicycle, (3) the sound made by a bicycle bell sounded unexpectedly behind you, (4) the sound of oars in the water at a distance on a quiet evening, (5) the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk in the dead of night, (6) the sound made by some one walking through autumÆ leaves, (7) the sound made by a section hand driving spikes on the railroad, (8) the sound made by a large stone thrown into

deep water, (9) the sound of cheering heard from a distance, (10) the sound of boisterous laughter coming from another room, (11) the sound of wagon wheels going through a pile of loose gravel, (12) the whinnying of a horse, (13) the sound of a train passing at full speed, (14) the sound of a covey of partridges rising.

67. Assignments for Details of Life and Movement. A. In the following description of a place, what details are introduced to produce the effect of life and movement?

On the coast of Maine, where many green islands and salt inlets fringe the deep cut shore line; where balsam firs and bayberry bushes send their fragrance far seaward, and song sparrows sing all day, and the tide runs plashing in and out among the weedy ledges; where cowbells tinkle on the hills and herons stand in the shady coves, on the lonely coast of Maine stood a small gray house facing the morning light. All the weatherbeaten houses of that region face the sea apprehensively, like the women who live in them. This house of four people was as bleached and gray with wind and rain as one of the pasture rocks near by. There were some cinnamon rose bushes under the window at one side of the door, and a stunted lilac at the other side. It was so early in the cool morning that nobody was astir but some shy birds, that had come in the stillness of dawn to pick and flutter in the short grass. - SARAH ORNE JEWETT.

B. Try writing a brief description of a house, introducing details that produce the effect of life and movement.

C. In the following description of a person what details add liveliness by indicating movement and action?

He was smallish in stature, but well set and as nimble as a goat; his face was of a good open expression, but sunburnt very dark, and heavily freckled and pitted with the smallpox; his eyes were unusually light and had a kind of