Composition-Rhetoric Part 37

EXERCISES

_A._ Select the sentence or part of a sentence which gives the fundamental image in each of the following selections:--

1. It was a big, smooth-stone-faced house, product of the 'Seventies, frowning under an outrageously insistent Mansard, capped by a cupola, and staring out of long windows overtopped with "ornamental" slabs. Two cast-iron deer, painted death-gray, twins of the same mold, stood on opposite sides of the front walk, their backs toward it and each other, their bodies in profile to the street, their necks bent, however, so that they gazed upon the pa.s.ser-by--yet gazed without emotion. Two large, calm dogs guarded the top of the steps leading to the front door; they also were twins and of the same interesting metal, though honored beyond the deer by coats of black paint and sh.e.l.lac.

--Booth Tarkington: _The Conquest of Canaan_ ("Harper's").

2. At the first glance, Phoebe saw an elderly personage, in an old-fas.h.i.+oned dressing gown of faded damask, and wearing his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length. It quite overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared vaguely about the room. After a very brief inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive that his footstep must necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly, and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first journey across a floor, had just brought him hitherward. Yet there were no tokens that his physical strength might not have sufficed for a free and determined gait.

It was the spirit of a man that could not walk. The expression of his countenance--while, notwithstanding, it had the light of reason in it-- seemed to waver, and glimmer, and nearly to die away, and feebly to recover itself again. It was like a flame which we see twinkling among half-extinguished embers; we gaze at it more intently than if it were a positive blaze, gus.h.i.+ng vividly upward--more intently, but with a certain impatience, as if it ought either to kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at once extinguished.

--Hawthorne: _The House of the Seven Gables_.

3. One of the best known of the flycatchers all over the country is the kingbird. He is a little smaller than a robin, and all in brownish black, with white breast. He has also white tips to his tail feathers, which look very fine when he spreads it out wide in flying. Among the head feathers of the kingbird is a small spot of orange color. This is called in the books a "concealed patch," because it is seldom seen, it is so hidden by the dark feathers.

--Mary Rogers Miller: _The Brook Book_.

(Copyright, 1902, by Doubleday, Page and Co.)

Notice the use of a comparison in establis.h.i.+ng a correct fundamental image in example 3.

_B._ Select five buildings with which the members of the cla.s.s are familiar. Write a single sentence for each, giving the fundamental image.

Read these sentences to the cla.s.s. Let them determine for which building each is written.

_C._ Notice the pictures on page 218. Write a single sentence for each, giving the fundamental image.

+Theme LII.+--_Write a paragraph, describing something with which you are familiar._

Suggested subjects:-- 1. The county court house.

2. The new church.

3. My neighbor's house.

4. Where we go fis.h.i.+ng.

5. A neighboring lake.

6. A cozy nook.

(Underscore the sentence that gives the fundamental image. Will the reader get from it at once a correct general outline of the object to be described? Will he need to change the fundamental image as your description proceeds?)

+121. Point of View.+--What we shall see first depends upon the point of view. Seen from one position, an object or a landscape will present a different appearance from that which it will present when viewed from another position. A careful writer will give that fundamental image that would come from actual observation if the reader were looking at the scene described from the point of view chosen by the writer. He will not include details that cannot be seen from that position even though he knows that they exist.

Notice that the following descriptions include only that which can be seen from the place indicated in the italicized phrases:--

_Forward from the bridge_ he beheld a landscape of wide valleys and irregular heights, with groves and lakes and fanciful houses linked together by white paths and s.h.i.+ning streams. The valleys were spread below, that the river might be poured upon them for refreshment in day of drought, and they were as green carpets figured with beds and fields of flowers and flecked with flocks of sheep white as b.a.l.l.s of snow; and the voices of shepherds following the flocks were heard afar. As if to tell him of the pious inscription of all he beheld, the altars out under the open sky seemed countless, each with a white-gowned figure attending it, while processions in white went slowly hither and thither between them; and the smoke of the altars half risen hung collected in pale clouds over the devoted places.

Wallace: _Ben-Hur_.

(Copyright, 1880. Harper and Bros.)

The house stood unusually near the river, facing eastward, and standing four-square, with an immense veranda about its sides, and a flight of steps in front, spreading broadly downward, as we open our arms to a child. _From the veranda_ nine miles of river were seen; and in their compa.s.s near at hand, the shady garden full of rare and beautiful flowers; farther away broad fields of cane and rice, and the distant quarters of the slaves, and on the horizon everywhere a dark belt of cypress forest.

--Cable: _Old Creole Days_.

+122. Selection of Details Affected by Point of View.+--A skillful writer will not ask his reader to perform impossible feats. We cannot see the leaves upon a tree a mile away, and so should not describe them. The finer effects and more minute details should be included only when our chosen point of view brings us near enough to appreciate them. In the selection below, Stevenson tells only as much about Swanston cottage as can be seen at a distance of six miles.

So saying she carried me around the battlements _towards the opposite or southern side of the fortress and indeed to a bastion_ almost immediately overlooking the place of our projected flight. Thence we had a view of some foreshortened suburbs at our feet, and beyond of a green, open, and irregular country rising towards the Pentland Hills. The face of one of these summits (say two leagues from where we stood) is marked with a procession of white scars. And to this she directed my attention.

"You see those marks?" she said. "We call them the Seven Sisters. Follow a little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the hill, the tops of some trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst of them. That is Swanston cottage, where my brother and I are living."

--Stevenson: _St. Ives_.

(Copyright, 1897. Charles Scribner's Sons.)

Notice in the selection below that for objects _near at hand_ details so small as the lizard's eye are given, but that these details are not given, when we are asked to observe things far away.

Slow though their march had been, by this time _they had come to the end of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before the castle._ They stopped here and stood looking off over the garden, with its somber cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down upon the valley, dim and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, fantastic-shaped clouds, pearl-white with pearl-gray shadows, piled themselves up against the scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and out among the rose trees _near at hand_, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud bourdonnement, the c.o.c.kchafers promised by Annunziata,--big, blundering, clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and businesslike compet.i.tors, the bees.

Lizards lay immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their little glittering, watchful pin heads of eyes giving sign of life. And of course the blackcaps never for a moment left off singing.

--Henry Habland: _My Friend Prospero_ ("McClure's").

_We round a corner of the valley, and beyond, far below us, looms the town of Sorata. From this distance_ the red tile roofs, the soft blue, green, and yellow of its stuccoed walls, look indescribably fresh and grateful. A closer inspection will probably dissipate this impression; it will be squalid and dirty, the river-stone paving of its street will be deep in the acc.u.mulation of filth, dirty Indian children will swarm in them with mangy dogs and bedraggled ducks, the gay frescoes of its walls will peel in ragged patches, revealing the 'dobe of their base, and the tile roofs will be cracked and broken. But from the heights at this distance and in the warm glow of the afternoon sun it looks like a dainty fairy village glistening in a magic splendor against the t.i.tanic setting of the Andes.

--Charles Johnson Post: _Across the Highlands of the World_ ("Harper's").

Come on, sir; here's the place. Stand still. How fearful And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down Hangs one that gathers sampire, dreadful trade!

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.

The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark Diminish'd to her c.o.c.k; her c.o.c.k, a buoy Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge That on the unnumber'd idle pebble chafes, Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight Topple down headlong.

--Shakespear: _King Lear_

+123. Implied Point of View.+--Often the point of view is not specifically stated, but the language of the description shows where the observer is located. Often such an implied point of view gives a delicate touch to a description that could not be obtained by direct statements.

In which of the following selections is the point of view merely implied?

1. Thus pondering and dreaming, he came by the road down a gentle hill with close woods on either hand; and so into the valley with a swift river flowing through it; and on the river a mill. So white it stood among the trees, and so merrily whirred the wheel as the water turned it, and so bright blossomed the flowers in the garden, that Martimor had joy of the sight, for it reminded him of his own country.