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foreign to the art of the painter, such as those of sounds and odors.

2. METHODS OF ATTAINING EFFECTIVENESS IN DESCRIPTION

Though the writer is thus precluded from representing impressions with the definiteness and distinctness of painting or drawing, he should endeavor to give his descriptions as much distinctness as possible. The reader's imagination must be stimulated so that some kind of a mental picture be formed, some kind of unification of the details mentioned may be made. The best way for the writer to do this is to get, in the first place, a comprehensive grasp of the thing to be described; then to select and arrange, according to some natural or obvious plan, the details most suggestive of the effect he wishes to produce; and, lastly, to choose his words with an eye to their picturesqueness or vividness. Comprehensiveness of grasp, suggestiveness in the selection and arrangement of details, and vividness in the choice of words,these are the clues to effectiveness in description.

The comprehensive grasp which the good descriptive writer has of the object he is describing will manifest itself in the general outline of the description. This will vary, of course, according to the nature of the object described. In descriptions of landscapes, for example, the general outline of the object is often indicated in a rapid preliminary sketch, the details of which are to be filled in later. Sometimes this sketch takes the form of a comparison of the general

outline of the object with that of some well-known figure, as in Thoreau's description of Cape Cod:

Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts! the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay; the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre; the wrist at Truro; and the sandy fist at Provincetown,-behind which the State stands on her guard, with her back to the Green Mountains, and her feet planted on the floor of the ocean, like an athlete protecting her Bay,-boxing with northeast storms, and, ever and anon, heaving up her Atlantic adversary from the lap of earth,ready to thrust forward her other fist, which keeps guard the while upon her breast at Cape Ann.1

A similar comparison is that used in Stevenson's description of the Bay of Monterey:

The Bay of Monterey has been compared by no less a person than General Sherman to a bent fishing-hook; and the comparison, if less important than the march through Georgia, still shows the eye of a soldier for topography. Santa Cruz sits exposed at the shank; the mouth of the Salinas river is at the middle of the bend; and Monterey itself is cozily ensconced beside the barb. Thus the ancient capital of California faces across the bay, while the Pacific Ocean, though hidden by low hills and forest, bombards her left flank and rear with never-dying surf. In front of the town, the long line of sea-beach trends north and northwest, and then westward to inclose the bay.❜

Another way of stimulating the reader's imagination to form a picture of the whole is to give, first, 1 From Thoreau's Cape Cod.

2 From Across the Plains.

the general impression or effect of the whole, and then to follow this up with the mention of appropriate details, especially those which contribute mainly toward producing that effect. A striking example of this method is seen in the description of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado given below. When this method is carried to the extreme of suppressing the details altogether, or of almost suppressing them, we have what may aptly be called indirect description, as in the following, for example:

At the beginning, while gazing south, east, west, to the rim of the world, all laughed, shouted, interchanged the quick delight of new impressions! every face was radiant. Now all look serious;-none speak. The first physical joy of finding oneself on this point in violet air, exalted above the hills, soon yields to other emotions inspired by the mighty vision and the colossal peace of the heights. Dominating all, I think, is the consciousness of the awful antiquity of what one is looking upon;-such a sensation, perhaps, as of old found utterance in that tremendous question of the Book of Job!" Wast thou brought forth before the hills?" And the blue multitude of the peaks, the perpetual congregation of the morns, seem to chorus in the vast resplendence,-telling of Nature's eternal youth, and the passionless permanence of that about us and beyond us and beneath, until something like the fullness of a great grief begins to weigh at the heart. For all this astonishment of beauty, all this majesty of light and form and color, will surely endure,-marvellous as now,—after we shall have lain down to sleep where no dreams come, and may never arise from the dust of our rest to look upon it.1

1 View from the summit of Mont Pelée; Lafcadio Hearn, Two Years in the French West Indies.

With regard to the selection and arrangement of the details in a description, care must be taken, in the first place, that only those which are most prominent or striking be chosen. These are what we may term the suggestive details, the details that best stimulate the reader's mind to form the desired image. Moreover, only so many details as are necessary should be used, and no more. Superfluous details have a confusing effect; they tend to blur the reader's mental picture, and distinctness of impression is almost the first consideration in description. As to the arrangement of these details, the method is that of simple enumeration according to some suitable plan. Mere enumeration without plan will not, of course, serve the writer's purpose. The details must be arranged with as much regard as possible to the aid they give one another in their image or picture suggesting capacity. Bad arrangement will spoil the effect of the most admirably chosen details.

As to what details are most striking and what arrangement is likely to be most effective, the writer can best judge if he keeps always in mind the point of view from which he observes the thing to be described. That point of view must, of course, be definite, else the writer's own impression will be vague and his chances of producing a vivid impression on the mind of the reader correspondingly slim. No one can make another see clearly what he does not see clearly himself. If, for instance, the writer wishes to describe a bit of scenery, he must first get a clear image of it in his own mind, which can be done only by viewing it, in reality or in imagination, from some

point in the foreground. Viewed from this point, certain features of the scene will stand out more prominently than others and will relate themselves in a particular way. These features are the suggestive ones, and this particular relation the one that the writer should seek to reproduce.

Note the distinctness of this sketch from Stevenson's Edinburgh, a distinctness attained by fixing the point of view and by attending carefully to the perspective:

Kirk Yetton forms the northeastern angle of the range; thence, the Pentlands trend off to south and west. From the summit you look over a great expanse of champaign sloping to the sea and behold a large variety of distant hills. There are the hills of Fife, the hills of Peebles, the Lammermoors and the Ochils, more or less mountainous in outline, more or less blue with distance. Of the Pentlands themselves, you see a field of wild heathery peaks with a pond gleaming in the midst; and to that side the view is as desolate as if you were looking into Galloway or Applecross. To turn to the other, is like a piece of travel. Far out in the lowlands Edinburgh shows herself, making a great smoke on clear days and spreading her suburbs about her for miles; the Castle rises darkly in the midst; and close by, Arthur's Seat makes a bold figure in the landscape. All around, cultivated fields, and woods, and smoking villages, and white country roads, diversify the uneven surface of the land. Trains crawl slowly abroad upon the railway lines; little ships are tacking in the Firth; the shadow of a mountainous cloud, as large as a parish, travels before the wind; the wind itself ruffles the wood and standing corn, and sends pulses of varying color across the landscape. So you sit, like Jupiter upon Olympus, and look down from afar upon men's life. The city is as silent as a city of

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