will follow each other in the order of time; sometimes they will group themselves by senses, all sound details together, all color details together, and so on. In describing a landscape it is well to pass in an orderly way from the foreground to the background, from the left to the right. In describing a person it helps to group together facial details, details of dress, details of pose or gait, and the like. As an example of what can be done in this way to reduce the reader's confusion to a minimum and insure an essentially accurate image, the following paragraph will bear careful study:

George Washington may be described as being as straight as an Indian, measuring six feet two inches in his stockings, and weighing 175 pounds when he took his seat in the Houses of Burgesses in 1759. His frame is padded with well-developed muscles, indicating great strength. His bones and joints are large, as are his feet and hands. He is wide-shouldered, but has not a deep or round chest; is neat-waisted, but is broad across the hips, and has rather long legs and arms. His head is well-shaped though not large, and is gracefully poised on a superb neck. A large and straight rather than prominent nose; blue-gray penetrating eyes, which are widely separated and overhung by a heavy brow. His face is long rather than broad, with high round cheek-bones, and terminates in a good firm chin. He has a clear though rather a colorless pale skin, which burns with the sun. A pleasing, benevolent, though a commanding countenance, dark brown hair, which he wears in a cue. His mouth is large, and generally firmly closed, but from time to time discloses some defective teeth. His features are regular and placid, with all the muscles of his face under perfect control, though flexible and expressive of deep feeling when aroused by emotion. In conversation he looks you full in the face, is deliberate, deferential, and engaging. His voice is agreeable rather than strong. His demeanor at all times composed and dignified.1

In some cases it is even possible to give the reader the aid of a simple framework or plan, called a "fundamental image," with reference to which all the details may be placed in his mind. Thus, for instance, we have Hugo's famous description of the field of Waterloo in terms of the letter A, and Stevenson's descrip

1 Quoted from George Nurse in Ford's The True George Washington. J. B. Lippincott Company. Used by Professor Carpenter in his Rhetoric and English Composition.

tion of the Bay of Monterey in terms of a bent fishing hook. Indeed this means appears frequently in daily life where such popular names as Jug Rock, Horseshoe Falls, Sugar Loaf Mountain, and such nicknames as Pin, Splinter, and Egg really imply a fundamental image. A good demonstration of the value it may have when an appropriate device can be found, appears in Hugo's The Man Who Laughs:

The peninsula of Portland, viewed geometrically, presents the appearance of a bird's head, of which the bill is turned towards the ocean, the back of the head towards Weymouth; the isthmus is its neck.

D. BLENDING

There is still another step in the process. After fixing a definite point of view, selecting the essential details, and grouping them so that the important ones will be prominent and all will stand in a natural order, the writer must blend these separate details to give an unbroken total effect. It is only the clumsy beginner in any art who sets down a number of details and leaves them entirely unrelated, unfused. The dominant impression in the artist's mind will not only determine his choice of details, but will also unify his treatment of them. Some one detail will become the central detail and all others will be related to it; or some one effect will become the chief effect and the several details used to bring this out will thus be fully blended. In describing a scene from country life, for example, a writer must do more than enumerate a plowed field and a house and a lawn and a tree and a chair and a man and a newspaper and a dog; that would almost inevitably produce a miscellaneous result. He must draw these details together to give something of the total effect of the scene,—perhaps idleness or restfulness or intelligent thrift. In the passage from Poe already quoted there is masterly blending, especially in the paragraph where he describes Usher's room. In the last sentence he assists his readers to unify his description by specifying that "an air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded

all." The same blending to give one pronounced effect and the same use of a unifying device appear in the following paragraph. Here Irving brings out a single impression of the farm through his introductory characterization of the farmer.

Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but within these everything was snug, happy, and well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it; and piqued himself upon the hearty abundance, rather than the style in which he lived. His stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks, in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great elm-tree spread its broad branches over it; at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water, in a little well, formed of a barrel; and then stole sparkling away through the grass, to a neighboring brook, that bubbled along among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for a church; every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm; the flail was busily resounding within it from morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings, or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek, unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens; whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior, and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings, and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart.1

III. SPECIAL DESCRIPTIVE MEANS

A. COMPARISON

Such, then, is the general process. Every piece of description, whatever its length or kind, necessarily involves fixing a definite point of view, selecting details, grouping them,

1 Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

and blending them. It is useful, in addition, to know some of the special means which the descriptive writer may employ. Very often, for instance, he will find that he can best call up an image in his reader's mind by likening it to one which his reader has already formed. He may do it in a single figurative word, as "fruit of a most untempting frowziness," "great ungainly splashes of shadow," and "a soft pour of sound." He may work out the figure more explicitly, as does Mr. Burroughs when he says, "The west wind the other day came fraught with a perfume that was to the sense of smell what a wild and delicate strain of music is to the ear; "" 1 or Mr. Richard Harding Davis when he says, "His body was swept by the fever, which overran him like an army of tiny mice, touching his hot skin with cold, tingling taps of their scampering feet."2 Or he may even elaborate a fuller comparison, as in the case of the famous Homeric similes. Of course, the writer must keep within the range of his reader's experience and he must never seem to strain after an effect. But when wisely made, a comparison is an excellent means of presenting an object which is altogether new and strange to the reader, or one which baffles more direct methods. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that in a sense all description is comparative, since, as we have already explained, a reader must always image things in terms of his own sense experiences. To invite him, through an apt comparison, to put one thing alongside another in his mind, therefore, is really helping him to make an interpretation of the writer's description which he would have to make consciously or unconsciously in any case.

B. CONTRAST

Very similar to description by comparison is description by contrast. Here there is the same advantage of setting the object described beside something which the reader already knows;

1 April Odors in Birds and Poets. Houghton Mifflin Company.

2 A Derelict.

but the points of difference rather than the points of resemblance are brought out. And quite evidently, points of unlikeness will often be more significant in individualizing an object than points of likeness. Stevenson, for instance, in characterizing the voice of the Pacific," says, "The sound of the sea still follows you as you advance, like that of wind among the trees, only harsher and stranger to the ear." And Ruskin uses this same device more elaborately in his description of St. Mark's, where he develops in detail the differences between the grim cathedral of a quiet English town and the splendid cathedral in Venice. It is not at all necessary, however, to combine contrast with comparison or to work out the contrast explicitly. In fact, the more usual way is simply to bring unlikes into juxtaposition. By placing certain details in sharp contrast with certain others, some important feature of the thing described can be made to stand out distinctly. Just as the jeweler gives a foil to a stone, and the painter uses a spot of brilliant color in the midst of dull hues or a spot of light against heavy shadows, so a writer may well seize every fair opportunity of increasing the vividness of his image by means of contrasts. Thus in the midst of an altogether comfortless and forlorn scene Irving introduces "a crew of hardened ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle," and in the description of St. Mark's mentioned above, Ruskin leads up to his picture of the magnificent cathedral with a picture of a narrow alley filled with the din of petty business.

C. SUGGESTION BY EFFECTS

A third special means of making description adequate is what might be called the mirror method. Instead of giving the reader a direct delineation of the object, the writer may arrange for him to see the effect which this object has on some one else. Thus in daily life we get some impression of the taste of medicine by the facial expression of the person swallowing it, or of the activities outside a classroom by the attitude of the students