Elementary Composition · Part 16

The first sentence of this paragraph states the fact that the author wished to convey to you. All the rest is added to make the conditions seem vivid to you, to make you feel the heat, smell the rank odor of the corn, and hear the murmur of the leaves. You will notice that this is different from the description in the last lesson, where you have been trying to tell merely how a scene or object looked to you, to make a picture such as an artist might paint. Here you are made to notice odors, motion, noises, and heat,--things that a painter would find it difficult to suggest in any picture.

Think how different would be the effect of intense cold on a street in a big city or in the heart of the forest, and you will see that in the effect of given conditions on all kinds of objects you have one of the best methods of portraying a scene.

For instance, in both the country and the city the rapid approach of a thundershower is preceded by black clouds and a high wind. The difference lies in what effect these things have. In the country, the wind tosses the trees wildly about, roars among the branches, scatters the dry leaves in volleys. In the city the arrival of a storm is heralded by a flapping of awnings, little whirlwinds of dust, crowds of people hurrying to shelter or looking up at the sky, and a hasty removal indoors of everything that would be spoiled by the rain.

Exercise 113.--In treating such of the following subjects as your teacher may indicate, try to notice odor, noise, and movement as well as form, color, and position:--

1. A very cold day in a city street, in a barnyard full of animals, in our class room, on the playground, in the woods, beside a river or brook, on a street car, in a railway train, at the station. 2. A very rainy day in our garden, in summer, in spring, in autumn, inside a barn, in an attic, in a henyard, in a crowded business street, on a boat, at the door of a department store, or church, or theater, at a country fair, at a picnic. 3. A snowstorm in the country, in the city. 4. Muddy walking on a country road, in a plowed field, in a city street, on the playground, at the door of our school. 5. A hot night on our piazza, indoors, in a public square, in the woods, in a theater, in a flower garden, in the street in front of our house, at a pleasure resort. 6. A high wind in the country, in the city, in summer, in autumn, in winter, on the harbor or river, at sea, in a tall tower, an attic (this mainly for sounds), in a pasture full of horses, in a group of pine trees, in a cornfield, in a city park, in a city court on wash day.

Exercise 114.--As a class exercise, try writing on some one subject and comparing the results. See who has been able to produce the clearest impression and why his description is successful. The subjects should be only those of which the whole class has an equal knowledge, e.g. description of some public person who has addressed the school; of the walk to school on a snowy, rainy, or hot day, of the playground at recess time, of the aspect of the halls directly after school is dismissed, of the schoolroom, of any incident which all the pupils saw, a fire in the neighborhood, etc.

69. Description by Contrast.--Another excellent device in description is contrast. For instance, if you wish to describe the effect made by a day in the woods when rain has frozen in falling and has coated everything with ice, you might begin by making a brief picture of such a day in the city,--every one slipping uncomfortably, horses straining painfully to keep their footing, the wheels of street cars revolving uselessly on an ice-coated track; and then suddenly transfer your description to the woods, where the trees are as though made of glass, every little twig a prism to reflect light, and where the bits of ice falling from the trees tinkle like broken glass on the frozen snow.

Exercise 115.--Describe, by contrasting with each other:--

1. A heavy draught horse and a race horse. 2. A canoe and a raft. 3. A Newfoundland dog and a pug dog. 4. Your class room when every one is busy and quietly studying, when every one is just going away, and when it is deserted after school hours. 5. The kitchen of your house on different occasions,--washing, ironing, just before dinner, just after a candy pull, after the work is all done, on a Sunday afternoon. 6. A theater full of people and bright with lights, afterward darkened and deserted except for cleaning women. 7. Our garden at different times of year,--in spring, when planting is being done; when I am weeding it on a hot day in summer; when everything is ripe in autumn; in winter, snow-covered. 8. A grocer's shop in early morning with a sleepy boy sweeping out, and later when full of customers and clerks. 9. An apple tree in blossom; in autumn with ripe fruit; in winter. 10. A brook or river frozen over with skaters on it, and in midsummer with swimmers, etc. 11. The route I generally take to and from school,--in the morning (other pupils going to school; business men going to their offices; butcher's carts and grocery and ice wagons); in the afternoon (nurses out with babies, ladies calling, children at play, etc.). 12. A public square in its ordinary aspect, and on the Fourth of July, or Decoration Day, or Election Night. 13. A department store full of shoppers just before Christmas, and early in the morning on a hot summer day, with only the clerks and a few customers. 14. A railway station, quiet and deserted, with only a few travelers waiting silently, and when an important train arrives, bringing a crowd of passengers.

70. Description of Events.--In the extract given below there is a certain amount of definite information conveyed, in addition to the pictures presented.

Slowly and mournfully they carried his embalmed body in a procession of great state to Paris, and thence to Rouen, where his queen was, from whom the sad intelligence of his death was concealed until he had been dead some days. Thence, lying on a bed of crimson and gold, with a golden crown upon his head and a golden ball and scepter lying in the nerveless hands, they carried him to Calais, with such a great retinue as seemed to dye the road black. The King of Scotland acted as chief mourner, all the Royal Household followed; the knights wore black armor and black plumes of feathers, crowds of men bore torches, making the night as light as day; and the widowed Princess followed last of all. At Calais there was a fleet of ships to bring the funeral host to Dover; and so, by way of London Bridge, where the service for the dead was chanted as it passed along, they brought the body to Westminster Abbey, and there buried it with great respect.--CHARLES DICKENS: A Child's History of England.

An account of almost any happening, custom, or festival must be told in this way, with an eye both to stating facts clearly and at the same time to making them seem lifelike.

This sort of exercise is harder than anything you have yet tried, for you must be at once complete and full in your account and yet must continue to go on in the sort of picture making you have been practicing. In a way, this is almost a return to some of the exercises in narrative which you have had, since a description of several happenings in order of time is really a narrative. At any rate, in trying this sort of description you are like a person who has been learning to play the piano, first with the right hand and then with the left, and finally with both together in a simple but complete melody. You are to keep in mind that you have two aims in view: to be as full as is necessary to give an accurate idea of the facts, and to attempt to present a picture.

Exercise 116.--Describe accurately, as though for a newspaper or magazine, but trying to reproduce some of the essential characters of the event:--

A fire drill in your school; how you celebrate Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Hallowe'en, New Year's Day; laying the corner stone of a new building; the procession of the veterans on Decoration Day; a political parade or meeting; a wedding; a funeral; the parade of the Fire Department; a play or entertainment given by your school.

71. Picture Making of Scenes of Action.--Here, instead of describing something stationary, like a house or landscape, the writer has taken one moment of a scene of action, and has attempted to make, as it were, a snapshot photograph of it.

To-day the large side doors were thrown open toward the sun to admit a beautiful light to the immediate spot of the shearers' operations, which was the wood threshing floor in the center, formed of thick oak, black with age. Here the shearers knelt, the sun slanting in on their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the polished shears they flourished, causing them to bristle with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man. Beneath them a captive sheep lay panting, increasing the rapidity of its pants as misgiving merged in terror, till it quivered like the hot landscape outside.--THOMAS HARDY: Far from the Madding Crowd.

All the painters of historical pictures try in the same way to paint one moment of a well-known incident, and they select some significant moment; that is, one where the action tells something of the story involved.

Exercise 117.--I. Imagine that you are about to paint a picture of any one of the following scenes, and describe what comes into your mind when you think of the incident. Do not tell the story--simply describe the scene at a given moment.

1. Columbus sighting land. 2. Columbus landing. 3. The burial of De Soto. 4. Pocohontas saving the life of John Smith. 5. Penn making a treaty with the Indians. 6. A scene in the attack on Braddock by Indian skirmishers. 7. An night attack by Indians on a colonial settlement. 8. The discovery of Major André. 9. King Alfred and the cakes. 10. The rain of manna on the Children of Israel.

II. Try in the following subjects to make a picture which would serve as illustration to a story. See if you can make the picture recognizable, so that your classmates can tell what the story is from the one scene from it which you present them.

1. Horatius at the bridge. 2. The Sleeping Beauty. 3. William Tell and the apple. 4. Cinderella trying on the slipper. 5. Ivanhoe and Rebecca during the progress of the battle which Rebecca is describing. 6. Ulysses, returned to Ithaca, is recognized by his old dog Argus. 7. Uncle Remus telling stories to the little boy. 8. Barbara Frietchie. 9. Robinson Crusoe and the footprints.

Here is a description, by Parkman, of the robbing of a train of pack horses carrying valuable goods.

Advancing deeper among the mountains, they began to descend the valley at the foot of Sidling Hill. The laden horses plodded knee-deep in snow. The mountains towered above the wayfarers in gray desolation, and the leafless forest howled dreary music to the wind of March.

Suddenly, from behind snow-beplastered trunks and shaggy bushes of evergreen, uncouth apparitions started into view. Wild visages protruded, grotesquely horrible with vermilion and ocher, white lead and soot; stalwart limbs appeared, encased in buckskin; and rusty rifles thrust out their long muzzles. In front and flank and all around them white puffs of smoke and sharp reports assailed the bewildered senses of the travelers.--FRANCIS PARKMAN: The Conspiracy of Pontiac.

With this description you are again almost back to narration. The extract presents two pictures, and in so doing, relates a story.

This way of telling a story by a succession of pictures is a favorite one with comic illustrators, but it is also used very often in writing, although in a real narration explanatory matter is added between the scenes.

Exercise 118.--The following topics are given as subjects for description only, and you are to try to give as vivid a picture of the two scenes as you can, letting the story tell itself by inference.

1. Boys skating at top speed along a river with a pack of wolves in the distance. A camp of wood choppers beside the river, a fire burning, the boys fallen exhausted, and men starting up with guns in their hands.

2. People on a raft waving coats and handkerchiefs wildly. On board a big ocean steamer, with passengers gathered around the group of rescued castaways.

3. A Christmas tree inside a richly furnished room with well-dressed children gathered around it. Outside in the snow a group of poor children looking in at the window.

4. A boy with a swollen jaw in the dentist's chair. A group of smaller children to whom the boy proudly holds up a tooth.

5. A hen calling wildly to her chickens and trying to cover them with her wings, and a farmer running up with a gun. The farmer has his gun in one hand, and with the other holds up a big hen-hawk for a group of people to see.

6. A street with everybody running in one direction, pointing ahead. A house on fire with firemen climbing up on ladders.

7. A family assembled at the dinner table in the evening quietly talking together. A man taps on the window pane outside; every one starts up in surprise and great pleasure, as if he were a relative returned from travels.

8. A group of women gathered at the end of a pier on a stormy night, straining their eyes anxiously out to sea. A fisherman returning up the beach, at early dawn, with a net full of fish on his back. In the background a small house with children running out to meet him.

72. Travel.--It is hard to draw a definite line between descriptive writing and narrative writing, since description is very often needed to make a narration interesting, and sometimes to make it complete. There is one kind of composition where the two methods of writing are needed in almost equal quantities, and that is in stories of travel. In writing an account of a journey, you have a distinct story to tell, since you are narrating a series of events that took place one after the other; but without description of what you saw the account is scarcely worth writing at all. Your aim is to give your reader a clear idea of the course of your journey, and you can only do this by a combination of narration and description, by telling what happened and then by trying to make a picture of the event. So that there are two main things to remember in writing of travel: first, to make your journey clear and intelligible by following the time-order in your narration, and by recollecting all the important stages of the trip; and, second, to select for description the most interesting incidents or places which you saw, and to write of them as vividly and picturesquely as possible.

The roads were gay early next morning when we started, for it was market day, and the country people were flocking into town, some driving their pigs, some riding donkeys with calfskin saddles adorned with little red tassels; the women wearing high-crowned hats with bright handkerchiefs tied on underneath, and bright cotton shawls; the men with brown-and-white-striped blankets gracefully thrown over the shoulder, and in their hands long, brass-tipped staves. Most of the women had large gold earrings, and some of them, in addition, gold chains and crosses and filigree heart-shaped pendants. We met presently a troop of fishwomen running at full speed to catch the market, their baskets balanced on their heads. Their earrings were hoop-shaped, and their skirts short and tucked up, and they had embroidered purses hanging at the side. The fishermen we overtook a little later, going back toward the sea with their nets. All had time to touch their caps and say "Good day," for civility to strangers is the rule in Portugal. Here and there were children minding goats under the shade of the olives. No idlers, no beggars were to be seen. At noon we came to Alcobaça, and walked through the town to the great abbey church of the Cistercians. The market was going on outside it. Gayly dressed women presided over heaps of maize and oranges and eggs. Strings of donkeys were tied up by the wall. A scarlet-robed acolyte walked amongst the people collecting alms. A broad flight of steps led up to the great door. Inside all is very simple and grand--a vaulted roof, rows of slender columns, no pictures or tawdry decorations to be seen. Now and then, not very often, a woman would come in from the busy market place and kneel to say a silent prayer.... We visited the convent where Beckford had lived, and saw its great tiled kitchen and its beautiful cloisters, and then went back to the inn to lunch, where we enjoyed above all a liberal dish of green peas--green still in our memories.

We drove on through pleasant fields and vineyards, catching sight now and then of the distant sea, and, suddenly coming to an open space through the trees, we saw before us the great memorial church of Batalha, the Battle Abbey of Portugal, its pinnacles and the delicate lace work of its roof standing out against the clear blue sky. It stands quite alone, except for the handful of red-tiled houses that form the village, and from its roof you look down, not on the smoke and turmoil of human habitations, but on green fields and slopes and olive trees; and under its walls no troops of beggars, or pleasure seekers, or chattering merchants disturb the stillness. One only I saw there, sitting near the door under the shade of a bright-colored umbrella, a heap of pottery at her feet for sale, and a donkey tied up close by; but her child had fallen asleep in her arms, and she did not move or speak. Inside, also, all was quiet, and we could enjoy its beauty--the long aisles, the endless columns, the exquisite cloisters, where the fantastic and varied stone traceries contrast with the quaint formal garden with its box-edged beds, in which are set roses, and peonies, and columbines.... We learned that the church was founded in 1387 by the great King Joao soon after the fighting of the decisive victory which it commemorates, and that there is a doubt as to the architect employed, whether he was an Irishman named Hackett, or another. I am all for the Irishman, but hope he was not also responsible for the idea of laying the foundations in this hollow, where the water lies when the winter floods begin. We tried to find out, through Antonio, how high the water actually rises, but he would only wave his hands deferentially and say, as though he had been one of Canute's courtiers, "As high as you please, sir." That night we slept at Leiria. The inn is over a stable, and one room looks out on a piggery and another on a fowl yard.