also details of color, of sound, and of odor. Accordingly, we find every skillful writer most careful in fixing a definite place and time for his descriptions, and holding to the point of view consistently.

This demand for the faithful maintenance of a definite point of view does not mean, however, that having decided to describe a college campus from a hill outside the town, the writer cannot give his reader a nearer view of it in the same sketch; that having shown the beauties of the campus on an autumn morning, he cannot also picture its charms on a moonlight evening in spring; that having given a view of the exterior of a college building, he cannot describe its interior as well. Obviously the writer's purpose often demands that a description be as complete as possible, and to that end he will describe the same scene or object from several points of view. Moreover, he may even need to present material that can be observed only by moving continuously, - tramping through a piece of woods, driving up a mountainside, or riding on a train along the course of some river. In fact, if description is not to be severely restricted in its usefulness, changes in the point of view will sometimes be absolutely necessary. But whenever any such shift is made, or whenever the point of view is progressive, the writer must be careful to warn his reader. To be sure, he need not come out in a bald, mechanical manner and say that the reader is to consider himself moved along from one place to another; but unobtrusively, deftly, by suggestion as much as by explicit statement, he must make every change unmistakable. In the following passage from The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe shows the right kind of skill:

Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine, tangled webwork from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the

crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.

Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his

master.

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.

2. Mental attitude. Furthermore, a mental point of view is involved in descriptive writing. Inasmuch as two people never describe the same scene in the same way, it is evident that the individual writer's sensing of things is always affected by his attitude of mind. But more than this, in any description which is at all personal there is likely to be a special state of mind, or a mood, which determines what details are sensed and how they influence the one who senses them. The same college campus which seems one sort of place to the homesick freshman seems quite another sort of place to the eager junior or the reminiscent alumnus. Likewise, in the following paragraph from Irving, it is easy to see that the writer's pronounced impatience to be out and on his way led him to perceive only the gloomy aspect of things:

A wet Sunday in a country inn ! — whoever has had the luck to experience one can alone judge of my situation. The rain pattered against the casements; the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound. I went to the windows in quest of something to amuse the eye; but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of the reach of all amusement. The windows of my bedroom looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stableyard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw that had been kicked about by travelers and stable-boys. In one corner was a stagnant pool of water, surrounding an island of muck; there were several halfdrowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable, crest-fallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit; his drooping tail matted, as it were, into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back; near the cart was a half-dozing cow, chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapor rising from her reeking hide; a walleyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttered something every now and then, between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a kitchen wench tramped backwards and forwards through the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself; everything in short was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hardened ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making a riotous noise over their liquor.1

Of course, any such special mental state or mood, when once it is taken, must be consistently maintained. Yet there need be no violation of unity, if the mental point of view is varied in order to combine different impressions of the same person or place. A writer may want to contrast the beauty which a garden has for some artistic guest with the hopelessly forbidding look which it has for the boy who must weed it; or to set the irritating noisiness which a city street has for him in an hour of weariness over against the stimulating hum of busy life as it comes to him in an hour of eager strength. These changes in mental attitude may be made as the occasion suggests; but, like changes in the physical point of view, they must bring no confusion to the reader.

1 Irving, Bracebridge Hall.

B. SELECTION

1. Necessity of selection. The second step in the descriptive process is selection. Once the writer has a definite point of view, his next concern is to know what details he ought to put in and what he can well leave out in order to give his reader just as clear and vivid an image as possible. Of course, he cannot hope to include all the details of real life. It is plainly futile for him to try to mention every line on a man's face, every twig on a tree, every separate sound on a spring morning. Neither he nor any other artist can compete with life, for "Life goes before us, infinite in complication." The painter and the sculptor realize this and do not try to get photographic exactness in their work. The writer, too, must realize that to attempt cataloguing every possible detail would tend to eliminate all individuality and suggestiveness from his sketches. A mere inventory is never artistic, and description without selection is hopelessly tedious and confusing. Yet on the other hand it is possible that the details may be too meager, leaving the image in the reader's mind dim and indistinct. A great problem for every descriptive writer, therefore, is to find the right details, the ones that will be most useful in conveying his mental image to his reader.

2. Finding essential details. If his description is to be successful, he must, in the first place, find those details which will clearly individualize his object. Whether he intends merely to suggest an image or whether he aims at careful identification, there will always be many details which are utterly inconsequential for purposes of the description and comparatively few which have real power to characterize. For instance, in describing a man it does not help much to say that he is five feet ten inches in height, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a smooth face; there are thousands of men who can be pictured in this way. Again, in describing a particular student's room, the conventional pillows and pennants and photographs are far less important than a well-framed copy

of Whistler's Mother on the wall or a toothbrush on the floor under a chair. Only those details which seem to belong peculiarly to the object have the greatest descriptive value. These significant details, however, are not always easy to find. As we all know from everyday experience, it is sometimes difficult to say just what is distinctive about objects with which we have long been familiar, and even more difficult to catch the most characteristic points about objects which are new. We may be asked to describe our own house so that a friend can locate it, and be at a loss to make it stand out unmistakably among the other houses in the same neighborhood. We may know perfectly well the difference between oak and ash, between a robin's note and a cardinal's, between the taste of veal and chicken, and yet when we are asked just where the difference lies, we may be unable to make any specific reply. Still these simple matters of characterization, and far more difficult ones, too, can be mastered. It is not especially remarkable to come upon a blind man who can identify his friend's step on the sidewalk, or a housewife who can distinguish her visitors by the way they ring the doorbell. Occasionally we even find a man who can recognize a stone-mason by the gestures he makes when he speaks in a political meeting, or one who can tell a violinist from a cellist by the way he swings his arms when he walks. The essential in this skill seems to be not only a quick perception, but also the habit of clear and decisive gazing, for as Mr. Burroughs has said, "not by a first casual glance, but by a steady, deliberate aim of the eye, are the rare and characteristic things discovered." And back of all is the knowledge of what to look for. The naturalist, the painter, and the sculptor alike know just what gives individuality to the objects which they present. In like manner the writer, while he observes closely, must also know what to count most significant in his observations.

Yet in the selection of details the writer of effective description must consider more than their distinctiveness. He will naturally wish to stimulate attention and at the same time to