CHAPTER VII. DESCRIPTION. The Effect of Description. 52. The effect of good description is to cause clear images of things to start up in the mind. Reading the author's words, we seem to see what the writer saw, to hear what he heard. If he describes the moonlight, we seem to see it sleeping on the bank. If he describes the flight of an express train, we seem to hear it rushing by at headlong speed. When description is at its best, its effects are not less powerful than those of the things themselves. Every reader of Lorna Doone will recall, as vividly as if he had seen it with the eyes of John Ridd, the quiet home of the outlaws, "the deep green valley, carved from out the mountains in a perfect oval, with a fence of sheer rock standing round it, eighty feet or a hundred high; from whose brink black wooded hills swept up to the sky line." He can both see and hear the little river that "glided out from underground with a soft, dark babble, unawares of daylight," and in his mind he can follow its course, as growing brighter it "lapsed away and fell into the valley," where "the valley alders stood on either marge, and grass was blading out upon it, and yellow tufts of rushes gathered, looking at the hurry." Just so every one who has read Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe has seen King Richard leading the attack on the castle of Front-de-Bœuf, "all about him black as the wing of the night raven,” rushing to the fray, “as if he were summoned to a banquet.' The reason why good description produces these definite effects upon us is twofold: (1) The writer has observed keenly and accurately the things to be described; (2) The writer knows just the right words to use for the purpose of producing the vivid images that he wishes to produce. 53. Assignments on the Effects of Description. A. Note the effects of the following. What images appear before your mind as you read? 1. On arriving at a hill, I would slowly ride to its summit and stand there to survey the prospect. On every side it stretched away in great undulations, wild and irregular. How gray it all was! 2. The other day, when I walked to Goodman's Hill, it seemed to me that the atmosphere was never so full of fragrance and spicy odors. There is a great variety in the fra grance of the apple-blossoms as well as in their tints. Some are quite spicy. The air seemed filled with the odor of ripe strawberries, though it is quite too early for them. The earth was not only fragrant, but sweet and spicy, reminding us of Arabian gales, and what mariners tell of the Spice .Islands. - THOREAU: Summer. 3. No dew-drop is stiller In its lupin-leaf setting Than this water moss-bounded. 4. He shook hands with the grip of a vise. 5. A little round, fat, oily man of God. 6. 7. I hear the wind among the trees, I see their branches downward bent, At daybreak on the black sea-beach, To see the form of a maiden fair Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozen on her breast, And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed, - LONGFELLOW: The Wreck of the Hesperus. 8. Upon the midsummer woods most of all lay brooding stillness and subtle, relaxing heat. In the depths of one the moo of a restless heifer broke at intervals upon the ear like a faint, far bell of distress. The squirrel was asleep. The cuckoo barely lilted in silky flight among the trees. The mourning moth lay on the thistle with flattened wings as still as death. The blue snake doctor had dropped on the brink of the green pool like a lost jewel. Amid such silence in a forest, the imagination takes on the belief that all things in Nature understand and are waiting for some one to come -for something to happen that they will all feel. Daphne glided like a swift, noiseless shadow into the woods. - JAMES LANE ALLEN: Summer in Arcady. 9. I gazed upon the schoolroom into which he took me as the most forlorn and desolate place I had ever seen. I see it now. A long room, with three long rows of desks, and six of forms, and bristling all round with pegs for hats and slates. Scraps of old copy-books and exercises litter the dirty floor. Some silkworms' houses, made of the same materials, are scattered over the desks. Two miserable little white mice, left behind by their owner, are running up and down in a fusty castle made of pasteboard and wire, looking in all the corners with their red eyes for anything to eat. A bird, in a cage very little bigger than himself, makes a mournful rattle now and then in hopping on his perch, two inches high, or dropping from it; but neither sings nor chirps. There is a strange unwholesome smell upon the room, like mildewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting air, and rotten books. There could not well be more ink splashed about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction, and the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the varying seasons of the year. DICKENS: David Copperfield. B. Try one of the following in a very few sentences: 1. Describe a piece of chalk so as to make us realize its smoothness. 2. Describe a certain room so as to make us realize its dinginess. 3. Describe a garden in July so as to make us realize its brightness. 4. Describe a walk into the woods especially for colors. 5. Describe a walk into the woods especially for sounds. 6. Describe the best dinner you ever enjoyed. Kinds of Images. 54. A great many of our words and phrases produce in other people no mental images. The prepositions and conjunctions rarely do. General terms will fail to pro duce an image, whereas specific terms, meaning the same thing, will almost inevitably bring images before the mind: civilization makes no picture, but the church, the school-house, the court-house, make images for us. The animal is less likely to set our minds to making pictures than the mention of the particular animal meant. We have uses, of course, for all of the words in our vocabulary, and the more words that we have of all kinds, the better we are equipped; but for description, the concrete and the specific term is better than the abstract; the individual is better than the general, because more likely to produce a mental image for our reader. Images of sights and images of sounds are the most numerous. Of the images of sights the most vivid are those produced when a color is named, or when movement is suggested. Most people produce a soundimage' with greater difficulty than they produce a 'sight-image'; probably because the eye is better trained than the ear. But there are also 'images' connected with the sense of touch, with the feeling of heat and cold, with smell and with taste. Words which produce such images, as they are needed, make description almost an equivalent of the thing described, at least to people of active imagination. 55. Assignments on the Use of the Concrete. ་ A. Compare the two versions that follow. Which causes images to appear more readily and more vividly? Why? Now came on the May-fly June was approaching; season; the soft hazy summer summer weather was close |