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 up, cheer up, Queen!" "Clip, clip, clip, and kiss me one against the other.

"Cheer Sweet!"

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.

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and gray,
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.

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.

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.