ane ee see 4 is 6 aces ee Me ES po es Oe Bes igs Gas Gees : arenes i fe athe ones etre RB Disposers pee Ce ; ‘ .s I aia niesrn - 4 : f “ ‘ 4 : y e ers pee Ge Fon - _*: > in 2 3 ‘ 2 . 4 - a a Oe] ei de) - ‘ s 1 a Cae eee hie HPSS SW NOCHE PH LS Kathe" oie a: ED Ee Se ie See eer ea | <= = a ae. The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN L161— 0-1096 BS ed a th Date SRS HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY L. A. SHERMAN HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY EXERCISES IN LITERARY COMPOSITION BASED ON PRINCIPLES AND EXAMPLES OF THE WRITER’S ART BY L. A. SHERMAN PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA That is what we call the art of writing—the summary and outcome of many arts and gifts. The grand secret of it, I believe, is insight—just estimation and under- standing by head and especially by heart—Carlyle: Letters to Vernhagen von Ense, III. NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Rs PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILLIAM RAINEY HARPER In Memoriam spe pheit ak i i i } ; ra} r ra th: : { 7 it ; 4 » EX 3 t “ rs v M 2 P ‘ x ‘ i ot wey 4 } ¥ . hd ‘ ‘we. "35 j uf 3 i i] pe aa Ve \ =} ft te Peary Os Peis FI pS \ " “, ‘ \ 4 ' * J * ’ 4! Vas: ? ‘ 1 FOREWORD The public is subconsciously beginning to expect, in its books and other reading, much of the clearness, directness, and visual quality that it enjoys in the intercourse, through letters and face to face converse, of outside life. The major number of manu- script offerings, perhaps severally faultless in the mechanics of English, are returned by publishers with the general com- ment, It lacks appeal. This formula is found to signify the absence, in varying degrees, of naturalness, concreteness, and sense images. This handbook is constructed in recognition of the deficien- cies in question, and with the aim, in some measure, of fore- stalling them. In preparing it, the elementary processes com- mon to great writers were sought out and analyzed, and the underlying principles arranged inductively, with some of the most salient illustrations available from English and other liter- atures. The story how the inquiry grew out of seminary studies of characterization, and local color, and how the results were tried out in college and secondary teaching conducted under the eye of the writer, and how students through them gained confidence and success, even to the point of public distinction in the field of the Short Story, was at first detailed for inclusion in a preface. On second thought the author withholds it as too intimate and personal to be related here. The writer desires to acknowledge his obligations, for per- mission to use copyright matter, to Rudyard Kipling, and to A. P. Watt and Son and Doubleday, Page and Company, his publishers ; to The Illustrated London News; to the New York Times, for Harold Bride’s account, in part, of the sinking of the Titanic; to Harper’s Magazine and to Dallas Lore Sharp for a quotation from “The Woods of Maine”; to the Macmillan Company for the paragraph from Dostoévsky; to L. C. Page and Company for the passage from Tolstéy; and to Heman viz viii 7 FOREWORD White Chaplin and to Little, Brown and Company, his pub- lishers, for the use of paragraphs from Five Hundred Dollars and Other Stortes. The author is indebted also, for valuable suggestions, to Professor W. T. Brewster, and to Professors P, H. Frye, F. A. Stuff, and R. D. Scott, his colleagues, for untiring aid and counsel. L, A. SHERMAN. Lincoln, Nebraska, August 14, 1925. INTRODUCTION — TUDENTS of English do not in general find out, of them- selves, the secret of describing and narrating pictorially. Yet every event or object has within itself elements or involves relations that enable and indeed invite visual presentation. English Composition, to be on a par with other studies, should not only show how to find the elements that will make a scene or object pictorial, but also how to do it in every case. Any- thing short of this efficiency must leave rhetoric and compo- sition out of the class of school subjects that can be really taught. The primary object of this manual is to supply instruction in what is called Visual Writing. It thus aims to make Eng- lish Composition take its place along with algebra and chem- istry and other inductive problem studies. But is it prac- ticable to treat composition as in the same class with arithmetic and geometry and physics, and hold the pupil to a positive and definite solution in every task? Some of us, it may be, have unhesitatingly and despairingly affirmed that it is not possible to narrate or describe visually, at will, much less teach the accomplishment to another. Yet perhaps we have only as- sumed that it is not possible. Other subjects as difficult as visual writing have become practicable to everybody through analysis of the processes or products of those who know. It would seem well to attempt similar analyses of narration and description, in the work of the best masters, before we declare that the case is closed. It is not difficult to make the test. The lessons in this volume offer, it is believed, a convenient means. But will not pupils care even less for composition, if it is to be burdened with new difficulties, than they do now? This is not, of course, an unfair assumption. But is it not just as reasonable to assume that the poor work which they are now doing, and of which we all Serenata is due to lack of interest x . INTRODUCTION in both end and means? Every subject of study should fur- nish its own motivation. English Composition assuredly does not. Suppose we supply something that will make each task worth while. It is not difficult to show the student how to execute studies in character-drawing and description that are as interesting and valuable as the sketches he makes, or the vases he brings home, from the lathe, to adorn his mantel or study table. It is found, moreover, that he feels a new sense of literary values, and seeks fresh materials to work upon, outside of prescribed tasks. It has been proposed to give over half the time devoted to high-school English, unless we can provide more fruitful courses, to other subjects. The proposal is not only just but timely. Fortunately such courses are not difficult to furnish, and their fruitfulness has been amply proved. Knowledge of life and human nature is not less important than other knowl- edge, and the study of literature and literary composition is a natural means of acquiring it. That this knowledge has not been administered successfully hitherto is not the fault of the student or the subject. We have-not reduced the unit of diff- culty. We have taught literature from without and not within. Moreover, in our anxiety to ensure mechanical accuracy in composition, we have left out of consideration the vital aspects of literature as an art. We have assumed that these are mat- ters that come of themselves. But they do not come of them- selves, and to the ordinary student, to whom we must address our teaching, they are unknown. It is possible to make our present four years’ work in Eng- lish more fruitful than any other. Educate the soul, and the intellectual part of the mind will develop with it. Educate this intellectual part alone, and we fail to educate at all. The soul is manifest in taste, in sympathy, in appreciation of personal worth, and in recognition of the beautiful and noble every- where. But these activities, at the present stage of pedagogical theory and efficiency, cannot well be promoted by systematic instruction in the school room. Yet we can develop the higher faculties of the pupil by showing him how to occupy himself with the observation of life and people, how to read and appre- ciate character, how to recognize objects and happenings of INTRODUCTION xi literary value in the world outside, and how to present his discoveries in a refined and literary way. The topics in this volume are offered as provisional means for the exercise of the zesthetic senses to which literature appeals. There seems no reason why literary composition should not take on much of the significance, in kind, that nature study offers in the material sphere. The work will also involve and strengthen sentiments that make for character-building in the adolescent mind. More- over, here as elsewhere, the greater includes the less. With the new motivation, it is observed that pupils set about the con- quest of the last redoubts of spelling and punctuation and paragraphing, of their own motion, because of pride in their work. The terms introduced here and there in various chapters, as new distinctions develop, are proposed merely as tentative and provisional names. An eventual nomenclature can be fixed only by evolution. Yet it has seemed better for example to apply “visual center” to the compelling element of a scene or hap- pening, than to borrow the artist’s term “principality” for the same phase of the picture, or to leave this vital part unnamed. Similarly, “sense appeals” and “imaginative appeals” define elements that call imperatively for distinction. Finally, some attention has been paid, in later chapters, to new features which literature, always a thing of growth, has brought into form in recent years. Pupils who leave hope of further instruction behind, on finishing the twelfth grade, are perhaps in greatest need of help in distinguishing genuine expedients of art from the flashy and spurious products of literary knack. Students of journalism also should know the chief secrets of literary mastery, as well as of visual and forceful writing, that they may not lose sight of the highest standards. The present manual is designed to reflect, in an elementary way, the spirit of modern literature-making, and is the fruit of experiments and studies engaged in, by the writer and assistants, at the University of Nebraska since 1890. The substance of the work has been covered in courses at Colorado College, Cha- tauqua Lake and twice by lectures and instruction at the Uni- versity of Chicago. CHAPTER I II iil IV Vv vi vil Vill IX XI XIT XIIT XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV CONTENTS DESCRIPTIVE. TELLING e407"). GRUBER ORCPLEMENTS revo de id SENSE APPEALS ELEMENTARY NARRATION VISUAL PRESENTATION OF PERSONS DESCRIPTION DESCRIPTION OF NOVEL FORMS DESCRIPTION OF LESSER AND MORE FAMILIAR OBJECTS Uti hana Re Caan ar : DESCRIPTION BY TYPES OF COLOR NARRATION FORMS OF NARRATION FORMS OF NARRATION (CONTINUED) LITERARY TECHNIC IN DESCRIPTION AND NAR- RATION . . ‘ EXPOSITION FORMS OF EXPOSITION . { é : CHARACTERIZATION ; ; CHARACTERIZATION (CONTINUED) ; : CHARACTERIZATION IN DEGREE INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION ; : : MOODS AND EMOTIONS SUBSTANCE AND ORIGINALITY ‘ ARGUMENTATION NARRATION BY IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE DESCRIPTION BY NARRATION . : DESCRIPTION WITH MYSTIC TYPE . : . xiii PAGE 17 24 31 37 52 63 43 84 93 100 III 124 131 144 158 167 175 185 200 208 218 233 244 251 xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XXVI NARRATION BY EXPOSITION . ... » -200 XXVII ASSOCIATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT . ‘ 1 293 XXVIII THE CONCRETE MANNER ‘ ; ; ii 282 XXIX SOLECISMS AND INFELICITIES . : : . 205 XXX SYSTEMATIC CRITICISM . } [ : RO XXXI ILLUSTRATIONS I Characteristics . ; : A Be Ge Hah LI0On )Laxrury ! Sma ; nate III Constantinople . . tees be IV The Magic of the eared ; MO eo NOTES esi gts gr a eget Ra ae Age: Ete HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY CHAPTER I DESCRIPTIVE TELLING E have the habit of dignifying almost any manner of stating the looks of things by calling it Description. Yet we are probably aware that there are many scenes and ob- jects which, even if awkwardly or imperfectly presented, pic- ture themselves definitely in our thought. No exercise of will is needed to image examples of this class. We cannot help visualizing the whole of what is told. One hears constantly, at home and at school and everywhere, reports like this of what some one has noted: . The house, I can tell you, was a sight. The Christmas tree in the parlor had been tipped over, there were strings of popcorn on the rugs, cookies had been crumbled over the sofa, and there was a pair of skates on the dining- room table. The children’s mother had gone out for the - afternoon. The speaker here simply mentions certain objects discon- nectedly, paying no attention to the process or the method. There is evidently all the effect, without the effort, of strong description. But there are other scenes and objects that do not at all visualize themselves on mention, but require of a writer both effort and knowledge. In dealing with examples of this kind, we are at once persuaded that Description is truly and prop- erly an art. If we should attempt to present the bridge here shown, so that the ordinary reader might construct a picture of it in his mind, we should meet with difficulties, and be 17 18 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY forced to use art in overcoming them. Art, speaking gener- ally, is the power of finding and adapting means to attain some desired or necessary end. We are probably not clear, at this moment, how we should begin a task so complex and various. After we have tried our hand at easier exercises, we shall come back to this scene, and learn whether we can command the means, the skill, to present it visually and correctly. EDWIN NATURAL BRIDGE, SOUTHERN UTAH We may well begin our study of visual writing by examining the nature of scenes and objects which, like the example from life just cited, may be said to visualize themselves. This sen- tence, from Conrad’s Nostromo (p. 276), is an illustration of the same kind from books: The low door of*the café, wide open, was filled with the glare of a torch in which was visible half of a horse, switching its tail against the leg of a rider with a long iron spur strapped to the naked heel. The picture that rises in our minds is definite and striking, and not from any especial use of art, as is evident, in draft- DESCRIPTIVE TELLING 19 ing it. The passage is ill-constructed, and has indeed been criticized, as to the use of “which,” as ambiguous and un- grammatical. But the writer could hardly have failed, except by miscalling the objects in it, of making the product visual. So we feel warranted in accounting it an example, not of description proper, but rather of pictorially associated and enumerated elements, or of “descriptive telling.” More precisely, our minds are stimulated to realize the scene pictorially, not by the long spur and the naked heel individ- ually as such, but by the union of these incongruous ideas. A spur is usually attached to the heel of a riding-boot instead of a bared foot. The glare of a torch does not ordinarily, in our experience, fill the door of a café, or light up only the hinder half of a horse, or issue—as we are later told—from burning tow and resin in an iron “basket,” carried on a stick at the saddle bow of a horseman. Conrad, it would seem, sub- consciously expected that this spectacle would appeal to the fancy of his reader through the odd grouping of its elements or parts. The mental principle that ensures effectiveness in such cases is now brought to view. Our minds are quickened to visual- izing action when things not usually in connection are reported as seen together. Ordinary objects associated in ordinary ways are apt to lose, from familiarity, this power with fancy. Strange combinations of any sort are sure to attract attention, are often told of and remembered, and sometimes appear in the funny column of the newspapers. But it is not merely our sense of humor that prompts us to communicate common- place observations such as these: Once on Wall Street wharf I saw a young Mexican get out of a Holland omnibus bearing in his hand a parrot cage stuffed with shoes—Flandrau: Viva Me-ico, p. 10. So I left my fairy godmother, with both her hands on her crutch-stick, standing in the midst of the dimly lhghted room beside the rotten bride-cake that was hidden with cobwebs.—Dickens: Great Expectations, Chapter XIX. Another champion had included among his warlike ac- coutrements a curious-looking silver clock, which dan- gled by his side from a multitude of chains. This worthy, 20 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY I imagine, intended to kill time—Curzon: Monasteries of the Levant, pp. 176, 177. Incongruities of this sort, as observed in life, are often re- ported deliberately for visual effect in literature. Here are good examples: By the porch steps stood a wheelbarrow, packed with white china, a drop-light, and a brass cage of canaries. In the tray of the miner’s trunk were a pair of black gauntlets, a coil of fuse, a microscope, a geologist’s ham- mer, and a pocket dictionary. At the middle of the room, the house-maid was stand- ing on a glass-legged piano stool and timorously turning the key of the fixture, with rubber gloves, to light the gas. She had suffered a severe shock, from a tramp current, a night or two before. Pictorial effect may be produced upon imagination similarly by mention of objects as out of position, or in some strange environment: On the blue-lacquered running board of an automobile, standing in front of an apartment house, was a brown rooster, backed up against the body of the vehicle, as if on guard over it. Sometimes Mr. Northcote gets to the top of a ladder to paint a palm-tree, or to finish a sky in one of his pic- tures; and in this situation he listens attentively to any- thing you tell him. In the rain, on a college campus near the gymnasium, stood an old discarded square piano, open, with the music- support in position, while the big drops dashed and splat- tered along the yellowed keys. At the center of the most conspicuous panel was a square of white satin, enclosed in a broad gilt frame. Surprised, I went up to the object to see it better, and observed a hairpin fastened at the middle of the rich material. Among the odd remedies recurred to to aid my lameness, in my infancy, some one had recommended that so often as a sheep was killed for the use of the family, I should DESCRIPTIVE TELLING 21 be stripped, and swathed up in the skin, warm as it was flayed from the carcass of the animal. About four yards or five from the spot where the horse lodged himself was a well, and a pretty deep one too, by my word; but not a soul could tell what had become of the tailor, until Owen Smith chanced to look into the well, and saw his spurs just above the level of the water. So he was pulled up in a pretty pickle, not worth the washing. But what did he care? The examples now considered should prove sufficient to prepare for a first exercise in what may be called literary ob- servation. The fundamental skill of authors, as of artists, is attained through simple studies of common things. After eminence is achieved, the painter still scans outside nature for ideas and forms. Nothing of artistic promise or worth es- capes him. The master novelist is always on the watch for new aspects of men and things with which he may help satisfy the universal craving to know life wholly. Some authors pro- fess to use only such materials as they have seen and studied in the actual. For our part, we shall disregard for the present all objects that will not, on mention, picture themselves strongly. It is not necessary that the things sought for should be complex, or offer several or various visualizing details. Pictorial effect: is not dependent so much on the number as on the quality of compelling elements. Visualizing incongruity may subsist be- tween an object and the purpose it serves, as in Dickens’s use of a file, instead of a spoon, to stir a liquid. Or imaginative stimulation may be generated between substance and product, as in a suit made of old red carpet. But instances of visuali- zation through a number of details are often of high literary interest, and invite careful study. For our present purpose, the appropriate field of observa- tion is the crowded street. Here we can study people, and things of concern to people, at the same moment. Here the simpler secrets of visual writing, which cheap fiction-makers deal with by sheer knack, lie open to us. Likely enough, at first only sensational sights and objects will attract us. Of the reports below, it is conceivable that only the last might be 22 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY voted worthy, at the moment, of being offered as an example. But after a few excursions, the difference between freakish spectacles, and the normal aspects of real life, grows clear. Here is a wagon loaded with new bright-yellow step- ladders, piled to the very top. Now appears, in dark blue divided skirt, a lady riding horseback, under a large white parasol. Here is a round-shouldered man, sitting and driving, on the extreme front of an open market wagon, and using a lath for a whip. Rattling and bounding up from the stones of the pave- ment, a farmer’s wagon approaches, and standing up in it is a red calf, with a new rope about its neck. Here is a one-legged man on a galloping horse. He holds the reins in one hand, and keeps his crutch in place with the other, while the crutch, with each movement of the horse, stabs downward at the ground. Now we come upon a delivery conveyance in the form of a big red shoe, mounted on four wheels, with toe towards the horse, and driver seated above the heel, and with buttons on the left side as large as teacups. When material seems slow in presenting itself, and indeed generally, it will be well for members of the class to work co- operatively. Searching the field together, we challenge and stimulate each other’s powers of observation. Watching what approaches, or what we approach, we each ask some comrade, “Ts here anything which, told to another, would prove visual ?” The habit of quick perception can be sooner formed in part- nerships than by attempted exercise of it in singles. Nature study, it is to be remembered, is not more important or fasci- nating than the study of human nature. One of the immediate effects of our work will be a better appreciation, in our read- ing, of local color. EXERCISES 1. Report orally, in a class exercise, the results of your search for scenes or objects that have visual potency because composed of incongruous elements or parts. DESCRIPTIVE TELLING 23 2. Select two from these examples, and present later the details of each in a written paragraph of descriptive telling. 3. In a special class exercise, tell informally of the most non- descript object or situation that you can recall. 4. Try whether, in a written paragraph, you can make what you have just reported more effective and pictorial. 5. Report two examples of strong visualization, in current magazines or novels, through grouping of incongruous elements or parts. 6. Read Chapter XI of Dickens’s Great Expectations, and quote the examples of descriptive telling. 7. Report two instances, from books or magazines, of visual effect produced by presentation of objects displaced, or in unusual environments. 8. From Stevenson’s Treasure Island, or Conrad’s Youth, or some more recent volume, copy half-a-dozen passages made visual by incompatibility of parts or notions, and show which seems most pleasing or effective. 9. Looking through the “tabloid” paragraphs in some news- paper, copy two conspicuous examples, and note whether you can explain why they have been selected to be circulated through the country. CHAPTER II ORDER OF ELEMENTS ARE should be taken, in mentioning the parts of a scene or situation expected to prove pictorial, to keep the imag- ination of the reader from undoing what it is beginning to put together. This can be done by specifying right elements in proper order. In oral and unconsidered speech, this principle is frequently disregarded. Some one, for instance, will say, “I saw a horse trudging along a path much trodden. It was a white horse, and the path ran deep in woods. The horse was fitted out with a pack-saddle, and was carrying boxes of dynamite to some mining camp. At a little distance after, on the trail, was another horse similarly equipped, close after came another, then at a longer interval was a fourth. Behind the last, a man followed on foot. The woods we were going through were of fir.” We find, on trying to realize these details, that we alter the course of construction at least five times. At mention of “horse,” we see in our mind’s eye an unharnessed bay horse, bay being the usual color, and we see “a path much trodden” in level, open country. Next, having changed our notion of bay to ‘“‘white,” we revise the image of the horse, and fit him out with a pack-saddle supporting long white-pine boxes bal- anced upright on either side. Then we bring in another horse, doubting whether this also should be white, and replace the forest path with a mountain trail, and add another horse, and then another, and finally a man bringing up the rear on foot. Last of all, we exchange the woods we have pictured for a forest of fir. We thus finally complete the scene, but find it, because of our meddling with the organic processes of imagina- tion, singularly ineffective and unsatisfying. In order to present a scene naturally and vividly, we must think before we begin. We should always work, consciously 24 ORDER OF ELEMENTS 25 or subconsciously, from a plan. To do this, we need simply to ask ourselves, What part of the picture is it best to mention first? Shall it be the place, or what is to be presented in the place? How are other elements to be grouped? Of course, there will be different. answers, in different prob- lems, to these questions. Here, surely, we must make our hearer or reader see first the place. So we will say, “Along a mountain trail, in fir woods.” To keep the reader’s fancy from constructing the main idea wrongly, we will give notice beforehand of what it is like, and say, “a pack-train of four horses.” We thus prevent imagination, on mention of “horses,” from presenting them harnessed as horses at work usually are. It is of course not necessary to state that the horses in a pack-train are separated a little each from each. But the man who conducts the train may well enough be men- tioned, to close the picture, by himself. The scene, as a whole, will then be constructed in some such detail as this: Along a mountain trail, in fir woods, trudged a pack- train led by a white horse and followed by three others of a bay color, each carrying a tall pine box of dynamite balanced and fastened upright on either side of the saddle. A few paces behind the last of the horses, a man followed on foot. As there is movement in the picture, it seems at first an ex- ample of narration rather than of “description,” or of descrip- tive telling. But the figures in the scene do not alter their positions in any way. If we had taken our snap-shot earlier or considerably later than at the time chosen, we should have had practically the same picture as the one here shown. The object in narration is to exhibit the progress or product of some action. In description, one moment of time is as another. In narration, no two moments yield the same view. To introduce a panoramic scene, though provided like the foregoing with visualizing features, is not so easy as to pre- sent a more rounded picture. Elements that lend themselves naturally to grouping are held in thought more firmly: From a high telephone post, from which hangs a cable half-fastened, a lineman has fallen, by the breaking of his 26 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY belt, fifty feet upon the curbstone below. A crowd has gathered, and the coroner is making inquiries of other linemen who were near when the mishap occurred. A lady from the house opposite has just brought out a sheet, which now covers the lifeless body of the man. This ill-ordered paragraph contains strongly visual matter, and, in spite of the narrative details added to explain, treats a descriptive subject. We are sure of this because the pur- pose clearly is to show a single situation in a single view, and because there is no movement or change of relation in the materials to be used. The main idea calls for nothing more than descriptive telling. But this should be the first and not the last thing presented in the paragraph. After the scene is established, necessary explanation can be added. So we may recast after this fashion: Beside a tall telephone post near the curb, a white sheet spread out over the pavement covers an object, showing the outlines of a human form, from the view of an en- circling crowd. A lineman, by the breaking of his belt, has fallen fifty feet from the sagging cable, at the top of the post, to this spot where the form is lying. The lady standing a little aloof has just brought, from the house opposite, the white covering on which at its raised part all looks are centered. The incongruity involved in the idea of a linen sheet spread out upon a pavement is sufficient in itself to force the visuali- zation. It is not necessary to refer to other linemen, or to introduce the coroner interrogating witnesses while they wait for an ambulance to bear away the body. Only vital features can add intensity. Imagination may be trusted to supply, in needed measure, the scenes to follow. We see thus that details, where possible, should be grouped about some visual center. The linen sheet, serving as the focus of interest here, arouses the imaging powers of the mind, and keeps them alert while the remaining elements and the explanation are supplied. Writers sometimes fail, with right materials in reach, of timely and effective appeals to imagina- tion. The following, from Sue’s Wandering Jew (lI. iii), will illustrate : ORDER OF ELEMENTS 27 The steps of the ladder trembled, and an enormous head appeared on a level with the floor. The newcomer, who was more than six feet high, and gifted with Herculean proportions, had been well named Goliath. He was hideous. His squinting eyes were deep-set beneath a low and projecting forehead. His reddish hair and beard, thick and coarse like horsehair, gave to his features a character of bestial ferocity. Between his large jaws, armed with teeth which resembled fangs, he held by one corner a piece of raw beef weighing ten or twelve pounds, finding it no doubt easier to carry in that manner, whilst he used his hands to ascend the ladder, which tottered beneath his weight. The author’s first sentence is effective, and prepares for the tremendously visual stroke of showing the beef held and car- ried, at one corner, by the “fangs.” This is surely the next thing, after the head of the monster, that an observer in an ill-lighted room would make out, and is therefore the next thing to be told. But Sue withholds this, and goes on illog- ically to sketch the appearance of Goliath before he has had time to reach the top of the ladder. Suppose, instead, the author had handled his material after this manner: The steps of the ladder trembled, and an enormous head appeared on a level with the floor. Between the large jaws, armed with teeth that resembled fangs, this creature held by one corner a piece of raw beef weigh- ing ten or twelve pounds, finding it no doubt easier to carry in that manner, whilst he used his hands to ascend the ladder which tottered beneath his weight. This, except the last two lines, is clearly descriptive telling, and involves no especial skill on the part of the writer. It is not the “form” but the preposterous matter that makes the passage vivid. Moreover, the picture will hold itself together, about this visual center, while the appearance of the monster, now emerged from the ladder, is detailed: The newcomer, who was more than six feet high, and endowed with Herculean proportions, had been well named Goliath. He was hideous. His squinting eyes were deep- set beneath a low and projecting forehead. His reddish 28 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY hair and beard, thick and coarse like horsehair, gave to his features a character of bestial ferocity.+ The tendency in present-day literature, as has been noted, is strongly towards a larger use of visual quality. Many authors strive not only to multiply instances, but also to increase the vividness of pictorial effect. So we find that novelists and short-story writers, in dealing with hard problems of descrip- tion, often devise and insert incongruous elements in order to render an object or situation more striking. Indeed, some authors of this class would not scruple to intensify the scene, veritably reported in the second example of this chapter, by invented features. Conceivably, a hook-and-ladder wagon, and an engine still smoking, might stand opposite in the street, stopped in return from a recent fire. Less plausibly, the crowd might have been increased by a bevy of awe-struck girls in graduation caps and gowns. But such additions would visualize away from, and not towards, the focus of the scene. ‘On the other hand, a flash of lightning and drops of rain from a breaking storm, if within the facts, might be lastly men- tioned as the grim setting for such a tragedy. Great artists, as we shall discover, are never sensational beyond the warrant of reality. They compass sufficient ef- fectiveness by leaving nature as they find it. On reflection, we are inclined to suspect that Sue’s presentation of Goliath as carrying the meat with his teeth is an exaggerated incon- gruity of the sort in question. The author might have spared him one of his hands, from the ladder, to hold the beef, and so save the strain upon his “fangs.’’ But Sue does not con- cern himself with the probabilities here. He is intent merely to force upon us a spectacle that will persist in thought not only to the end of the description but till the whole episode is carried through. EXERCISES I. Examine the construction of the following sentence and show how presentation could be improved: 1 Goliath, as the author goes on to explain, is the servant of Morok, a brute- tamer, and is here bringing beef from the butcher’s to a tiger and a lion, two of the animals which Morok professionally ‘‘tames” before the public. ORDER OF ELEMENTS 29 Among other strange things he told of was a boy speed- ing along on roller skates, splashing in the rain in the middle of the street, under an umbrella. 2. Study the materials in this picture, which shows how the former site of a Greek temple looks to-day. The “pillar” is one of its ancient columns: The men were standing in the little market-place, under the shade of an old eucalyptus tree with a deep trough around it. Close by them two horses and some kids were tied to the weather-beaten pillar, which is over the foun- tain. What is the visual or persistent center of the scene? Has the writer improved to the full her opportunity? If not, show why, and recast. 3. Arrange the following for best visual effect, altering if nec- essary the language: Miss McRory was still in the saddle, but minus reins and stirrup; the wind had again removed her hat, which was following her at full stretch of its string. 4. Recast the following, from Lord Curzon’s Monasteries of the Levant, for better unity and visual effect: My boat was an original-looking vessel to an English eye, with a high bow and stem covered with bright brass: over the rudder there hung a long piece of network orna- mented with blue glass beads: flowers and arabesques were carved on the boards at each end of the vessel, which had one low mast with a single sail. 5. Find whether Mr. Snodgrass’s description can be improved in arrangement or pictorial skill: Mr. Snodgrass took a survey of the room. He describes it, as a large apartment, with a red brick floor, and a capa- cious chimney; the ceiling garnished with hams, sides of bacon, and ropes of onions. The walls were decorated with several hunting-whips, two or three bridles, a saddle and an old rusty blunderbuss. An old eight-day clock, 30 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY of solemn and sedate demeanor, ticked gravely in one corner: and a silver watch dangled from one of the hooks which ornamented the dresser. / 6. Study whether parts of costume that are first noticed in the actual should be mentioned first, and improve the order of presen- tation, if change seems needed, in each of the following para- graphs: A man on horseback, disguised as a postilion, with a blue jacket embroidered with silver, and an enormous pigtail from which the powder escaped in puffs, and a hat adorned with long ribbons, preceded the first carriage, cracking his whip and crying with all his might, “Make way for the Queen Bacchanal and her court!” The costume of the Queen Bacchanal was composed of a tight, long-waisted bodice in cloth of gold, trimmed with great bunches of scarlet ribbon, the ends of which streamed over her naked arms, and a short petticoat of scarlet velvet, ornamented with golden beads and span- gles. A sort of gilt diadem, hung with little bells, adorned her forehead. Her long hair, in two thick braids, was drawn back from her rosy cheeks, and twisted behind her head. 7. Find and report upon a good example, from some book or magazine, of descriptive telling that is helped in effectiveness by a natural arrangement of parts. 8. Find a like combination of visual materials that fails of just effectiveness, through wrong order of mention, and recast. CHAPTER IT] SENSE APPEALS HERE are other ways, besides combining discordant or incongruous elements, of arousing the imaging powers of the mind. Our imaginations are stimulated to realize objects or surroundings visually when one of our bodily senses is pleasurably or displeasingly addressed. A hungry man sees visions, when he smells coffee or broil- ing meats, of a waiting meal. The hot and thirsty traveler, on a railway train in midsummer, chancing on lines quoted from The Old Oaken Bucket in a magazine, feels his fancy kindle and sees in his mind’s eye some country scene with a well and its dripping bucket. A florist’s advertisement, near the end of Lent, makes us imagine the interior of a shop lined with Easter lilies. The notes of an oboe or a French horn, heard as we pass a concert hall, force upon our minds the picture of an orchestra and of an audience that we should be glad to join. We use this principle by instinct constantly. We tell our experiences, and expect our hearers to see and realize them with essentially the same vividness as we picture them with in memory. We can each recall many personal examples of proved efficiency: Our cook often flavored our apple pies with geranium leaves and stems, I believe the little scamp used a nail instead of his slate-pencil now and then on the sly. You should have seen the girls and the teacher scringe. Fumbling about in the dark for matches, I got my hand on some sticky fly-paper, which was fairly dripping, the night was so warm. It took me a full half-hour to get my fingers clear of the rosin. There was an abandoned garret room in the old farm house which was used ‘as a place to ripen quinces. Bush- 31 32 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY els of them were left on the floor for weeks, with all windows closed. You could almost taste the odor. As we rode out of the woods, in the starlight, the tones of a flute surprised us. We found that they came from a cottage, all dark within, which stood at the edge of the forest, and on the steps of which the player must have been sitting. The preceding chapters have shown us how forces in the mind make meanings under certain conditions visual to us. We have observed that they do this without summons or com- pulsion from ourselves. We do not call upon our imaging powers to conceive a parrot cage stuffed with old shoes, but on the contrary find ourselves helpless, without strong effort of will, to prevent the picture. In the illustrations of both chapters, our minds were aroused by some incongruity or nov- elty in the ideas presented. In the examples just considered, the force is derived from some sort of partiality or aversion towards the objects and thoughts involved. We may call the ideas by which forces of this sort are chal- lenged, Sense Appeals. Any name or object which prompts our minds to revive a sensation, is a Sense Appeal. In the various forms of sense appeals, masters of literary art find themselves provided with a valuable expedient. By the use of words alone, they can make us see visions of spread tables when we are not hungry, and hear tones with the ear of the mind when we are in no mood for music. Appeals to each of the “five senses” abound in books of fiction and travel: At midnight he sank once more into deep prostration, and we heard only the light sound of his nails picking at the sheets. He knew us no longer.—Anatole France: La Reine Pédauque. A. scent of dying wood-fires lingers in the air; the pines emit a balmy, resinous odor; our feet crush some unseen herb and a fresh fragrance uprises in response.—Sale: A Paradise in Portugal. All at once, at a turn of the road, they saw Tournoél. The ancient castle stood on the summit of a mountain, and was crowned by its tall, slender tower that was SENSE APPEALS 33 pierced so that shafts of moonlight streamed through its walls.— Maupassant. “Have you drunk the waters, Mr. Weller?” inquired his companion, as they walked towards High Street. “Once,” replied Sam. “What did you think of ’em, sir?” 4 “T thought they was particlery unpleasant,” replied am. “Ah,” said Mr. John Smauker, “you disliked the killi- beate taste, perhaps?” “T don’t know much about that ’ere,” said Sam. “I thought they’d a wery strong flavor o’ warm flatirons.” —Dickens: Picwick Papers. A sound of bells, and of sniffing and scuffling, roused him; a large gray goat had come up and was smelling at his hair—the leader of a flock, that were soon all round him, solemnly curious, with their queer yellow oblong- pupilled eyes, and their quaint little beards and tails. He lay still . . . while the leader sampled the flavor of his neck.—Galsworthy: The Dark Flower. The pictorial quality in these passages is forceful, yet there is no apparent effort or purpose on the part of the writers severally to produce description. They furnish no materials, and give no directions how to conceive the scene. Our minds are stimulated, and, without instructions, produce pictures that square with each event and moment. In many instances, sense appeals of different kinds are brought together, with enhanced effect, as in this example of mingled sight and sound and odor: They remained alone, the dead woman and her chil- dren. The ticking of the clock, hidden in the shadow, could be clearly heard, and through the open window drifted in the sweet smell of hay and of woods, together with the mellow moonlight. No other sounds from over the fields could be distinguished save now and then the croaking of frogs or the chirping of some belated insect. —Maupassant. It is thus clear that excellent examples of what is called de- scription may be effected, without skill except in arrangement, through simple appeals to our fancy or memory of sensations. 34 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Uses larger than incidental are often made of these expedients. The following paragraph, from Sudermann’s Es War (XIII), is seen to be made up almost wholly of combined and adjusted sense appeals: It was a sultry, steamy evening near the beginning of September. The river lay gleaming softly like a mirror of molten silver. Blue-black clouds were massed on the horizon, and occasionally lighted up their sides with faint flashes, unanswered by any echo of the thunder. On the wooded rise of ground above the river stood a glossy, fat, red pony, half harnessed to his governess cart, and flapping with tail and mane at the midges, which seemed that day more insolent in their onslaughts than usual. At intervals he set up a helpless neighing towards that spot at the edge of the water where the awning of a swimming pool showed white above the downy heads of the bul- rushes. From inside arose long-drawn shrieks, half tim- orous, half gleeful, such as girls indulge in when disport- ing themselves in the water. The effect of the passage as a whole is not so vivid as of some of the preceding examples, but is greater than the sum, speaking materially, of imaginative effects from the several parts. It is not necessary that all the features in such a view should have been met with in the actual. Memory and imag- ination work together. The mind images courtly and humble scenes with equal readiness. Mention of a kitten playing with a knitter’s ball of yarn, or of a girl, in flaxen braids, popping corn over a grate fire of glowing coals, appeals to fancy through our fondness for the idyllic and picturesque. Our interest in people finds satisfaction even when we are told of a negress coming in from her garden patch with new-dug po- tatoes in her apron, and holding and swinging a new hoe in her right hand. The picture is intensified by the incongruity of parts, and because of a certain commiseration which we feel for such a lot. Yet we would fain see life and “‘see it whole.” The realizing forces in our minds are roused apparently to their greatest activity by mention of experiences that are un- canny or repulsive. Circumstances of terror or peril, when reported to us, inspire images that are vivid in proportion to the degree of sympathy which the case awakens: SENSE APPEALS 35 One night, while asleep, I felt something icy touch my face. I leaped upright, but the sand, the tent, everything was hid in darkness. I lighted my lantern, ready to crush the supposed scorpion or viper with my heel, when I saw a monstrous white toad. There it was, squatting, puffed up, its feet wide apart, looking at me. The horrible crea- ture had probably found me in its path, and bumped against my cheek.—Maupassant. It is characteristic of a sense appeal that it provokes the mind to visualize, besides the particular thing signified, more or less of the whole of which it is a part. In the present case, the sense appeals of the icy touch, of the lighted lantern, and of the tent over its floor of sand, apart from the loathsome whiteness of the creature—which is the persistent and com- pelling center—make us see not only the space enclosed by the tent, but its site in the desert, and the twinkling of the stars above. Tennyson’s line from The Princess (IV. 26),— Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,— brings into mental view not alone the sail, with the light “glit- tering’ upon it, but also the ship, and the blue surrounding sea. EXERCISES 1. Bring in, from fresh observation in home surroundings, two good examples of sense appeals. 2. Report some scene or situation in school life which sense appeals make visual. 3. Recall some large landscape or sea view offering picturesque features or sense appeals, and present, after the manner of the paragraph from Sudermann, in visual detail. 4. Show how to present pictorially the appearance of a black- smith shop or foundry in which men work at night. 5. By sense appeals of odor make the interior of a drug-store or a grocery visual to the reader. 6. Construct an example in which sense appeals and incongru- ous elements combine with visual effectiveness. 7. Report two good examples of sense appeals from short sto- ries or other matter in current magazines. 86 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY 8. Show how to make a night scene pictorial through sense ap- peals of sound. g. Make a dining-room pictorial through use of some sense ap- peal of taste. 10. Discuss the effectiveness of this scene, from Hawthorne’s An Old Woman's Tale: In the house where I was born, there used to be an old woman crouching all day long over the kitchen fire, with her elbows on her knees and her feet in the ashes. 11. Try whether you can match from memory, for intensity, this example from John Muir’s Boyhood and Youth (p. 3): The needle-voiced field mouse. . . . When we sat down to rest on one of the haycocks I heard a sharp, prickly, stinging cry. 12. Write an appreciation of the sense appeals used by Kip- ling in the first chapter of Captains Courageous. CHAPTER IV ELEMENTARY NARRATION ING oe is like Description, except that there is al- ways a succession of scenes or actions to be presented, instead of (p. 25) a single view. Leading writers of the day consistently impart to their nar- rative passages a pictorial quality which often requires both patience and knowledge to ensure. This means that Narra- tion, like drawing and description, involves certain technical processes, and is fundamentally an art. But happenings in which incongruous elements appear, or sense appeals are avail- able, may be made visual without much effort. This para- graph, from Stevenson’s Black Arrow, will illustrate: An arrow sang in the air, like a huge hornet; it struck old Appleyard between the shoulder-blades, and picrced him clean through, and he fell forward on his face among the cabbages. Hatch, with a broken cry, leapt into the air; then, stooping double, he ran for the cover of the house. And in the meantime Dick Shelton had dropped behind a lilac and had his cross-bow bent and shouldered, covering the point of the forest. The incident is strongly visual, yet owes its effectiveness to the union of unusual elements much more than to narrative or dramatic skill. It is therefore an instance of visual telling rather than of narration proper. We note also that there is a visual center, just as in the illustrations of descriptive telling, in the second chapter. And there are at least seven scenes in this moving picture. The first of these stages is the coming of the arrow, which is likened in a sense appeal to the approach of an angry hornet. There is the abhorrent spectacle of Appleyard’s body hit and pierced through with the black arrow. Then follows his fall, face downwards, among the cabbages, where he lies 37 388 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY with the arrow standing upright between his shoulder-blades. This part of the scene stays fast in our minds, as a center of visual intensity, while the remaining actions, of Hatch’s leap- ing into the air, and scampering bent double to shelter, and of Dick Shelton’s dropping on his knee and covering the point of forest,—with the stock of his cross-bow set against his shoul- der,—are detailed. We note that the several steps or movements are mentioned as nearly as possible in their natural order. A bystander try- ing afterwards to tell the story, without thinking of a plan, would have been likely to give it a different form. If the cowardice of Hatch chanced to appeal to him as comical, while he recalled the scene, he would perhaps attempt, and unsuc- cessfully, to compose the picture around that point and mo- ment of the transaction, as the center of interest, instead of the victim: The black arrow came like a hornet, and took Apple- yard right between the shoulder-blades; and at that, Hatch leaped a yard into the air, then ducked off behind the house; and by that time Dick Shelton was down on his knee behind a lilac bush, covering with his cross-bow the corner of the woods that the shaft came from. As for Appleyard, he fell flat amongst the cabbages he was weed- ing, and lay face down with the arrow sticking straight up out of his back. We need to study carefully examples such as the present, which require no especial skill in recounting, particulars, that we may prepare for real problems in narration later. We have noticed perhaps that ordinary happenings about us, which we have not chanced to see, but hear reported by persons mak- ing no least pretensions to literary gifts, are often pictured vividly in our minds. Any one of us, now recognizing the main principle that they use, should be able to effect as much consciously with the pen, as they compass unconsciously with the voice. Unlike them, who sometimes fail, we should make our work visual in every trial. The annals of every neighbor- hood abound with incidents for practice: In a house cut off by the flood, which covered the lower parts of the city, there was left a mother who, with her ELEMENTARY NARRATION 39 infant child, had retreated to the second story. As the water rose towards the ceiling, she was obliged finally to stand upon a chair, and hold the child in the unfilled space above her head. When it was known that there were still inmates in the building, a hole was sawed in the roof and another in the ceiling. Through these the mother was lifted into a boat, where she swooned from exhaus- tion. On the platform with the preacher, sat a tall and formal minister, with long gray beard. As the sermon proceeded, a kitten appeared beside the pulpit and began to gambol, and make charges upon imaginary mice. When it came at length within the reach of the visiting clergyman, this man’s arm flashed out and gathered in the disturber. Through the remainder of the service, the kitten sported under the control of the minister, who stroked it con- stantly, now and then lowering it fr his beard, with which it appeared possessed to play. When proposed materials do not furnish, on inspection, as here, incongruous features to set in contrast, we can generally discover sense appeals of some sort that will engage imagina- tion. We remember that the mental light kindled by a part will often prove sufficient to illuminate the whole. The fol- lowing oral examples depend mainly, for their pictorial suc- cess, upon the sense appeals involved: In snow knee-deep, hornless black cattle were huddling. Across the prairie, on galloping horses, two cowboys ap- proached, making the snow fly upwards in clouds from the movement of the horses’ feet. A messenger boy in uniform was playing, on a long viaduct over railway tracks, with a snapping-turtle, left on the driveway probably by some returning fisherman. After worrying it with a stick, which it bit viciously, the boy caught it by the tail, and running after a passing cyclist, let it fasten itself by its teeth to the gray frame of the bicycle behind the rider. Then he followed a few steps shouting, “The first mud turtle that ever rode a wheel !” With instances like these from life, we may compare strong examples of the same class from literature. Authors are ap- 40 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY parently as fond of stirring imagination by incongruities in narration as in description: The Montefiores stood facing one another as in Cheret’s picture, some dozen yards apart, and an electric light was thrown on the younger, who was standing against a large white target while the elder deliberately traced his out- line with bullet after bullet. He aimed with surprising skill, as the dark dots one after another traced the out- line of his body.—Maupassant. After some delay a larger rope was seen descending at the end of which a strong net was attached. On its reaching the rock on which we stood the net was spread open: my two servants sat down upon it; and the four corners being attached to the hook, a signal was made, and they began slowly ascending into the air, twisting round and round like a leg of mutton hanging to a bottle- jack. The rope was old and mended, and the height from the ground was, as we afterwards learned, thirty-seven fathoms, or 222 feet. When they reached the top I saw two stout monks reach their arms out of the door and pull in the two servants——Curzon. In the following, sense appeals of sound, of odor, and of sight, anticipate and enhance the effect from incongruity of parts: The horn of the herdsman sounded from the lower Alps, and neck-bells tinkled as the long lines of placid cows moved from the upper pastures in obedience to the call, breathing perfume of scented vetch and honied crim- son clover, leaving froth of milk from trickling udders on the leaves and grass as they went.—Richard Dehan. This further example, from the Black Arrow, is one of Stevenson’s most successful presentations, and deserves to be memorized as a model: The daylight, which was clear and gray, showed them a riband of white foot-path wandering among the gorse. Upon this path, stepping forth from the margin of a wood, a white figure now appeared. It paused a little, and seemed to look about; and then, at a slow pace, and bent almost double, it began to draw near across the ELEMENTARY NARRATION 41 heath. At every step the bell clanked. Face it had none; a white hood, not even pierced with eye-holes, veiled the head; and as the creature moved, it seemed to feel its way with the tapping of a stick. Fear fell upon the lads, as cold as death. “A leper,” said Dick, hoarsely. “His touch is death,” said Matcham. “Let us run.” In addition to sense appeals of sight, we have here, in the slow measured strokes of the warning bell,—timed to the still slower tappings of the cane, remarkable sense appeals of sound. To show the extent to which masters of visual writing sometimes use the power of sense appeals along with incongru- ous suggestion, we may compare the following from Maupas- sant’s Toine. In this sketch, the author deals with the thrift of a Norman peasant woman, who hatches eggs under the arms of her bedridden, paralytic husband: About three o’clock Toine fell asleep. He slept in these days half the time. He was suddenly awaked by a strange tickling under his right arm. He placed his left hand on the place and lifted a tiny creature covered with yel- low down, which fluttered in his hand. His emotion was so great that he gave a cry, and let go his hold on the chicken, which ran across his chest. The customers in the shop ran into Toine’s room, and made a circle about him, as they would around a travel- ing showman. Meanwhile Madame Toine picked up the chicken, which had taken refuge beneath her husband’s beard. Here, as in many other instances, Maupassant appears to aim at vividness for the sake of vividness alone. Yet we find that more conservative authors write at times with equal un- restraint. For an illustration, compare this episode, which Holmes introduces in The Professor's Story: She opened her apron and showed a coil of rattlesnakes lying very peacefully in its fold. They lifted their heads up as if they wanted to see what was going on, but showed no signs of anger. “Lord bless you,’ said the woman, “rattlers never touches our folks. I’d jez ’z lieves handle these creatures as so many striped snakes.” 42 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY So saying, she put their heads down with her hand and packed them together in her apron as if they had been bits of cart-rope. We may be sure that the sensationalism of this example and of the preceding will not be surpassed by anything that we shall later find in reputable literature. In no case should dras- tic instances of this sort be imitated or sought for. It is finer training to reproduce the commoner visual occurrences that we observe daily, in outside life, making them incidental to a larger purpose. The following are typical illustrations: There was dead silence for a moment, so that the buzz- ing of a bluebottle against the window was distinctly audible. So they sent for the old Doctor. It was not long be- fore the solid trot of Caustic, the old bay horse, and the crushing of gravel under the wheels, gave notice that the physician was driving up the avenue. Never had I conceived the possibility of a boat scam- pering along before the wind at such a rate as this. My man crossed himself. I looked at the old pilot, but he went on, quietly smoking his pipe with his finger on the bowl to keep the ashes from being blown away. EXERCISES 1. Recall from recent observation some event or incident that will picture itself on mention of details. Determine the center of interest, and the proper order, and write out as a study in pic- torial narration. 2. Find a good example of like kind, in some book or maga- zine, and write an appreciation of its merits in matter and in visual order of elements or parts. 3. Report in writing, with attention to the center of interest and the order of parts, some happening that becomes visual on employment of sense appeals involved. 4. Find a similar example, in current literature, and write an estimate of its worth in matter and manner. 5. Select and report, from literature at hand, an illustration showing how authors make use of visual incidents, like the three last quoted in this chapter, to enliven and embellish their work. ELEMENTARY NARRATION 43 6. Compose, from fancy, a study in narration in which incon- gruous factors determine the visual success of the whole. 7. Compose another in which sense appeals materially assist the pictorial effect desired. 8. Compare the narrative portions of three or four short sto- ries in standard magazines, and make a written appreciation of the best paragraphs. 9g. Report, from the same readings, any notable use of sense appeals, and show how much is contributed by them to the visual success of the passage or passages selected. 10. Note the effect, upon your imaging powers, from reading the paragraphs quoted in this chapter, and report which of them spread out, after the manner observed from Tennyson’s line (p. 35), into a larger view. Detail any striking features in the expanded scenes. CHAPTER V VISUAL PRESENTATION OF PERSONS T is possible not only to present an action visually, but also, by a visual action, to suggest the appearance of the person performing it. Not long ago a gentleman, in a group of friends, wishing to give his impressions of a noted physician, told this incident. Coming from the dining-room of a hotel in the physician’s city, he took from the rack a hat which he supposed was his. Inside it, in large capitals, he read NOT YOURS. PUT TT, DOWN: The name of the person under discussion was added, in smaller letters, below. “I put the hat down,” the speaker continued, “as if I had been caught in a theft.” The narrator paused, after relating this experience, as if he thought he had brought in and presented to the company the man in question. And in a sense this feeling was not unwar- ranted. By the incident told he had made all the members see, in fancy, not only the hat, and the words in it, but also the presence of the man who had thus oddly kept his hat from going to the wrong head. They imaged also the hotel corri- dor, and the rack, and their friend as he excitedly put the hat back in its place. Thus, in general, any action that suggests the individual or peculiar nature that has prompted it, will inspire imagination to construct the looks of an actor having such nature or per- sonality. Perhaps no one of those who heard the story about the hat imaged the doctor’s face or form correctly. But the features and the figure which they severally shaped for them- selves were their personal and logical conception of how a man with such ways of doing things would look. For the pur- 4a VISUAL PRESENTATION OF PERSONS 45 pose of the moment, nothing more was necessary. If the speaker had wished to present the character, a different sort of transaction (See p. 158) would have been chosen. Had he intended to show the appearance of the man exactly, he would have needed to produce an engraving, such as usually accom- pany biographical sketches, or at least a photograph. What this speaker did is, in the main, what the modern writer aims at in his visual presentation of persons. He needs merely to make his public construct a working likeness, and so institute personal relations with his subject. We cannot hold the attention of average minds without doing as much as that. We can scarcely attempt more, short of characterization, with- out risk of boring the reader, or of making him skip our in- ventorying passage or paragraph altogether. In the earlier sort of fiction, most writers presented their chief personages in a manner almost contrary. Illustrations were rare and costly, and readers were less impatient of par- ticulars. Scott, to introduce the hero of Quentin Durward, treats of his dress, his figure, and his features, in three para- graphs of details. The first and longest of these may be quoted here for comparison: The age of the young traveler might be about nineteen, or betwixt that and twenty; and his face and person, which were very prepossessing, did not, however, belong to the country in which he was now a sojourner. His short gray cloak and hose were rather of Flemish than of French fashion, while the smart blue bonnet, with a single sprig of holly and an eagle’s feather, was already recognized as the Scottish head-gear. His dress was very neat, and arranged with the precision of a youth con- scious of possessing a fine person. He had at his back a satchel, which seemed to contain a few necessaries, a hawking gauntlet on his left hand, though he carried no bird, and in his right a stout hunter’s pole. Over his left shoulder hung an embroidered scarf which sustained a small pouch of scarlet velvet, such as was then used by fowlers of distinction to carry their hawks’ food, and other matters belonging to that much-admired sport. This was crossed by another shoulder-belt, to which was hung a hunting-knife, or couteau de chasse. Instead of the boots of the period, he wore buskins of half-dressed deer- skin. 46 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Scott seems here to be thinking out, for himself, how his hero should look, rather than developing to us a definite, pre- conceived idea. Of course, the reader of to-day gets pictorial effect, to some degree, from a paragraph like this. But he prefers a sentence or two that will inveigle him into making, unconsciously and without effort of will, a conception of his own. The images he forms for himself, by the free play of his constructive powers, last longer in his mind than prescribed portraitures like Scott’s. Compare these paragraphs, from Phillpotts’ Three Brothers (p. 5), by which this author indi- cates the looks of his heroine and hero: The girl nodded. She was a dark maiden with brown eyes and a pretty mouth. She sniffed rather tearfully and wiped her eyes with a corner of her sun-bonnet. Beside her sat a sturdy youth with a red face and a little budding flaxen moustache. His countenance was not cast in a cheerful mould. Indeed, he frowned and gazed gloomily out of large gray eyes at the valley be- neath him. We note that Phillpotts first tells us, to guide imagination, that the heroine is a brunette, and the hero, blond, with a “sturdy” frame. He adds, for the hero, the sense appeals of a “red face,” and a “budding flaxen moustache.” With these elements supplied, we cannot go wrong with our conception of the complete presence, which is at once shaped and individ- ualized for us, in the one case, by a visualizing action, in the other, by a visualizing pose. Visualizing action is ideally sup- plied for the heroine by making her wipe her eyes with the corner of her sun-bonnet. The attitude of the youth, with frowning face and large gray eyes fixed on the view of a far- reaching valley, appeals palpably to fancy. We may well call it a visualizing pose. The features and the posture of the hero, as sketched here by Phillpotts, make up an unusual picture of the sort consid- ered, under Descriptive Telling, in Chapter I. The visualizing movement of the heroine clearly belongs to the class of in- stances discussed in Chapter ITV. We use both modes con- stantly in common speech. The following are average ex- VISUAL PRESENTATION OF PERSONS 47 amples of visualizing action, told seemingly, by various ob- servers, for the sake of pictorial effect on respective hearers: Just at dusk a man passed our house, reading, and hold- ing his book close to his eyes. The young man seized a newspaper, wrong-side up, and pretended to be absorbed with the advertisements. Coming down the street was a boy, in brown knicker- bockers, eating from two ice-cream cones, one in each hand. The young lady leaned over in her saddle and flicked off a spot of dust, with her whip, from her yellow riding boot. The stiff-armed, rheumatic drug clerk used glue to- seal his letters, and never failed, after applying the glue, to pound on each as many as half a dozen times with his fist. The schoolmaster set copies for his pupils at the top of each page, and always flourished his pen three or four times in little circles, as if winding up a charm, before beginning. Examples of like kind are numerous in literature, and are often strikingly realistic and satisfying: Mrs. Lapham stood flapping the cheque which she held in her left hand against the edge of her right. While saying this, he was driving off the fluttering, cackling poultry, by kicking at them with his high top- boots. Then the old lady thrust her unmitted forefinger into her purse, and described circles therein with it, to find the small coin that she desired. “No,” said Lapham rather absently. He put out his huge foot and pushed the ground-glass door shut between his little den and the bookkeepers, in their larger den out- side. Once indeed I was disobedient. I refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter market. Pride was the source of 48 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY that refusal, and the remembrance of it was painful. And to-day I have been at Uttoxeter. I went into the market at the time of business, uncovered my head, and stood with it bare, for an hour, on the spot where my fa- ther’s stall used to stand. A few minutes later an old servant in livery would bring in a copper pan with a bunch of mint on a hot brick, and stepping hurriedly upon the narrow strips of carpet, he would sprinkle the mint with vinegar. White fumes always puffed up about his wrinkled face, and he frowned and turned away, while the canaries in the din- ing-room chirped their hardest, exasperated by the hiss- ing of the smouldering mint. Examples of visualizing pose are met with in common speech hardly less frequently than visualizing action, and are often equally artistic or telling. They are used in literature to kin- dle, for incidental embellishment, realistic pictures in the fancy: Bartley had found an agreeable seat on the head of a half-barrel of the paint, which he was reluctant to leave. During the whole evening Mr. Jellyby sat in a corner with his head against the wall, as if he were subject to low spirits. Dr. Pym rose and planted the points of his fingers on the table as he did when he was specially confident of the clearness of his reply. After an interval of some minutes, which both men spent in looking round the dash-board from opposite sides to watch the stride of the horse, Bartley said, with a light sigh, “I had a colt once down in Maine that stepped just like that mare.” Visualizing action may introduce or merge into a visualizing pose, as in the last paragraph but one in the preceding, or the third example here. Besides these modes of arousing fancy, an author may stimulate his reader to image the looks of a person by mention of something in the clothing worn, without hint of frame or features: The head tribesmen were in full dress. Two wore hats that were uncommonly grand, still being cased in VISUAL PRESENTATION OF PERSONS 49 those cylinders of pasteboard in which they had been packed. Or he may present a situation which, with no mention of clothes, will compel imaginative creation of a presence or figure: Only the two candles were burning on the table, be- tween which he had placed the book he was reading. He looked at me steadily from between the points of the candles. But these are special and partial ways of indicating the looks of people. The standard modern manner begins with mention of the age, type, class, weight, height, or some other general aspect, then adds something individualizing in face or dress or both, and ends with a striking appeal of some sort to imag- ination : Sir Charles Brewster, a lively young bachelor with high eyebrows, upturned tips to his moustache, and an air of surprise and complaisance.—Sedgwick. Mr. Bagnet is an ex-artillery man, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows, and whiskers like the fibers of a cocoanut, not a hair upon his head, and a torrid com- plexion.—Dickens. So Thresk for a moment was only aware of him as a big heavily built man in a smoking jacket and a starched white shirt; and it was to that starched white shirt that he spoke, making his apologies——Mason. The woman was a stout figure, seemingly between thirty and forty; she wore no cap, and her long hair fell on either side of her head like horse-tails half way down her waist; her skin was dark and swarthy, like that of a toad.—Borrow. At this point they were overtaken by a dapper little shopman, with a little goat’s beard, and with his fingers held apart like antlers, so as to keep his sleeves from slipping over his hands, in a long-skirted bluish coat, and a warm cap that resembled a bloated watermelon.—Tur- genev. 50 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Three of them, the younger ones, remained sitting, with a somewhat formal air, on crimson velvet chairs, while the fourth, about forty-five, was arranging flowers in a vase. She was very fat, and wore a green silk gown, with low neck and short sleeves, which allowed her enor- mous arms and stout red neck, covered with powder, to escape like a huge blossom from its corolla—Maupassant. Along the road walked an old man. He was white- headed as a mountain, bowed in the shoulders, and faded in general aspect. He wore a glazed hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass-buttons bearing an anchor on their face. In his hand was a silver-headed walking stick, which he used as a veritable third leg, persever- ingly dotting the ground with its point at every few inches’ interval—Hardy. Thus, in the hundred years since Scott wrote Quentin Dur- ward, a simple, succinct method of presenting personal ap- pearance, such in fact as we hear employed daily in common life, has come into literary use. First, general type of form or presence, followed by individualizing features, with some visualizing action or aspect added, when available,—this is ours and everybody’s instinctive manner. We note that Phill- potts, in the paragraphs quoted, illustrates the prevailing mode. Variations of course are met with. All the forms considered in this chapter may be used severally alone, or in combinations of two or three, or all indeed may appear together. Some authors employ, at least at times, the detailed manner of the earlier novelists. Some masters of fiction, as Howells, scarcely deal with looks at all. But these writers draw char- acter strongly, and proper characterization, as will be seen in later studies, forces the mind to visualize bodily appearance along with personality. Similarly, short-story literature some- times shows no mention of looks, but seemingly for the most part treats of personal presence in the usual way. On the other hand, Maupassant, Turgenev and Tolstoy, supreme among the masters, delight in sketching out their creations, great and small alike, with short, sharp strokes, making the general manner standard for all literary writing. VISUAL PRESENTATION OF PERSONS 51 EXERCISES I. Present, after the manner of the last examples in this chap- ter, the personal appearance of some one, of striking presence, whom you have known. 2. Present the same by employing only a visualizing action. 3. Make trial of the same using only a visualizing pose. 4. Note and report how the personal appearance of some one known to you has been presented offhand, orally, in your hearing. 5. Find and report how the chief persons in three modern novels are presented visually, and show which of the modes dis- cussed in this chapter are employed. 6. Read Scott’s description of the Black Dwarf in (Chapter IV) his novel of this title. Write your judgment whether the fea- tures are indicated in a right order for visual effectiveness. Show whether mention of the clothing assists the picture, and whether the number of details employed could be reduced. 7. Examine the short stories in three issues of standard maga- zines, and report whether personal appearance is touched upon at all, and if indicated, how successfully, and by what means. 8. From some approved likeness of Napoleon, construct a para- graph of presentation, making it as visual and vivid as you can. g. Give the reasons why the following paragraph is pictorial, and recast after the standard manner: As I was loitering along a side street, the other day, a man went limping by. He was of large frame, wore a battered straw hat and faded denim trousers, and was evi- dently a farm hand come to town with a load of hay. He had lost his right leg, and stumped along on a clumsy wooden substitute, and steadied himself with a pitchfork for a staff, grasping it by the tines. 10. Read Tennyson’s Geraint and Enid, and discuss the char- acters made visual by means here studied. 11. Study Hudson’s manner of presenting the looks of Epi- fanio Claro, in The Purple Island (p. 40), and write a paragraph of appreciation. U, OF tb. 118, CHAPTER VI DESCRIPTION E have begun to think, perhaps, while studying the last chapters, that we are postponing the essential part of our subject. We have been expecting to be taught how to depict scenes or objects accurately and fully, with words, just as artists work with lines and colors. It is indeed time to make inquiry and trial of what can be accomplished by Exact De- scription. ists eps —_— —_—_— -——_—_— -- « —— agar oat RRO N/a cath GD soot RRMA had Mi MEANS AC Nurh Se ee He : Cie ee \\ LRA A \ \ } 1 it vi AY \ Y RRBN\t AY thy Wi 1M NN We are asked, let us suppose, to present an object, such as here shown, by means of description, instead of a picture. Our task, as we recognize, is to describe the home in which the poet Whittier was born. We will give attention first to the house, which is plainly the visual center of the scene, and re- serve the grounds and the road for later study. 52 } ‘ L DESCRIPTION 53 Remembering, from the last chapter, that the general type of form should be mentioned first, to guide imagination, we may say that the house is a fair example of the New England colonial farm dwelling. We shall probably wish to add that the big chimney, as tall as a window, and twice as wide, stands at the middle of the roof. Some of us will then think that the front of the house should be spoken of as in length rather more than twice its height to the eaves, and then the door, as exactly at the middle, with a window over it and one on each side, in the second story, and two windows on each side below. Some one will wish to include mention of the roof as looking half as wide as the front is high. We see thus that Description is a sort of literary geography. The most that we can do, in attempting to reproduce an absent scene, is to draw a map of it. When we draw a plan of our village or city, we show by lines the lengths and directions of the streets, and the relative proportions of the blocks or squares. When we sketch a house or boat or chair, we trace * fundamental lines and angles, just as in the plan of our city. We produce nothing but a map in either case. The mind of the one who sees it makes the map over by imagination into the thing itself. But description is not so effectual as drafting maps or plans. When we sketch a plan, we draw lines along a surface that both we and our audience or public can observe at the same moment. When we make a description we must content our- selves with merely indicating lines or forms that our reader must draw, so to speak, in his own mind. We cannot be sure that he will draw all or any of these lines, though it is our business, by means lately studied and other expedients in reach, to make him draw them. With blackboard and crayon, we can not only sketch the outline of an object, but also add numerous details. In description, we must sketch without a blackboard, and must leave details largely to the reader’s imag- ination. So we shall need to guard against the fault of many writers, who seemingly think it fair to set themselves in sight of an object and tell us particulars about it without limit. They should not expect us to conceive a scene more clearly or com- 54 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY pletely than they can carry in their own thought. Indeed, in our present problem, we shall not succeed in making anybody picture so much of Whittier’s birthplace as we retain in fancy after removing our eyes from the view before us. We get a hint of proportionate treatment by study of the following, from the opening paragraph of The Kentons, by Mr. Howells: They believed that they could not be so well anywhere as in the great square brick house which still kept its four acres about it, in the heart of the growing town where the trees they had planted with their own hands topped it on three sides and a spacious garden opened southward behind it to the summer wind. We notice that Howells does not speak here of doors or windows, or very definitely of surroundings. Authors of an older school would have told us about the roof and porch, and kinds of trees, and probably about the fence or hedge. We should like to mention, after their manner, that the door in our picture shows, in its upper half, two long glass panels, and that there is the hint or beginning of a porch above. But we shall do wisely, before venturing further, to put our experi- ment to the proof. Let us content ourselves, at this point, with saying that the home of the elder Whittier was a two-story colonial farmhouse, with its big chimney at the center of the roof as tall as one of the windows, and twice as broad, and with the front entrance, flanked with two windows on each side, just at the middle below. We will go to our fellows, with this sentence, for judgment. If they grasp these elements of the picture strongly, we may consider adding further details. Probably the most of, those asked to pronounce upon this summary of points or features will adjudge it practically clear. Yet it is palpably not the kind of description that we had hoped to make, or that our critics will warmly praise. There is a vital and satisfying something that is not yet here. Per- haps we have been assuming that, to ensure an exact concep- tion of an object like this, we must supply dimensions. Poe does this in his description of Landor’s Cottage. The first of his seven paragraphs begins with these specifications: DESCRIPTION 55 The main building was about twenty-four feet long and sixteen broad—certainly not more. Its total height, from the ground to the apex of the roof, could not have ex- ceeded eighteen feet. To the west end of this structure was attached one about a third smaller in its propor- tions:—the line of its front standing back about two yards from that of the larger house; and the line of its roof of course, being considerably depressed below that of the roof adjoining. At right angles to those buildings and from the rear of the main one—not exactly in the middle—extended a third compartment, very small—being, in general, one third less than the western wing. The roofs of the two larger were very steep—sweeping down from the ridge beam with a long concave curve, and extending at least four feet beyond the walls in front, so as to form the roofs of the two piazzas.... How Poe chanced to write three pages of taxing details like these is not easy to explain. Nowhere else is he unmodern in description. If we are in doubt whether this method would serve us here, we can readily try its effectiveness upon those who helped us in the former case. Assuming the width of the door in front to be three feet and a half, we shall have a key to the scale on which the cut before us is drawn. Applying this, we might restate that the home of the Whittiers is a two- story farmhouse of colonial type, approximately forty feet in length, thirty in width, and nineteen high to the eaves, with a chimney six feet tall and four and a half broad at the cen- ter of the roof. The main entrance stands, without a porch, at the middle of the front, with two windows, two feet and a quarter wide, on each side below stairs, and one window over the space separating each pair and one over the entrance, in the second story. We shall doubtless find that those of us who are accustomed to make foot-rule and yard-stick measurements will construct a somewhat definite notion from these figures. But the great majority of readers cannot distinguish visually the difference between forty and fifty feet in the length or eighteen and twenty-one in the height of a building like the one before us. Indeed, such information as this would hardly bring, even to an architect or a carpenter, an edifying acquaintance with the Whittier domicile. Evidently other means or influences 56 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY must be brought into operation to ensure the unforced pictorial effect which description, in present days, must carry. If we go back to our first quotation (p. 54), we shall find that Howells does not describe the house of the Kentons ex- cept incidentally, and not at all from his own point of view. He seems rather an interpreter of the home life in it, and makes the interest that is to govern in the case proceed from the family and not the building. More precisely, this author does not attempt to bring the house piecemeal to us, but in- cS Sake’ |} b ey A ene 3 Adenia stead takes us with him to it and introduces us to the occu- pants, who inspire us to visualize both it and its surroundings. We readily conceive interest in worthy people, and carry the interest over to the things that attach to them. It is this inter- est which has made the description successful here. We get a hint now of what has been lacking hitherto. We have given too much attention to the home of the Whittiers, and too little to the Whittiers themselves. The special interest which was felt in the poet at the beginning needs to be supple- mented with other human interest as we go along, or before we finish. It requires no skilled inspection to discover that the dwelling we are to describe has been scrimped in several par- DESCRIPTION 57 ticulars, manifestly to reduce the cost of construction. How- ells, noting this, would doubtless say in effect, in his own dis- tinguished manner, that a struggle with poverty in the older Whittier’s early life seemed registered in the home he built, which was a colonial farmhouse, scant in cornice and jut of roof, with the standard consequential chimney, but with the main entrance porchless, and with the two windows on each side, in the second story, reduced to one. This telltale feature is at once apparent when we compare the former picture with the fulfilled New England type just shown. The foreground and setting of the home we are asked to describe may be treated similarly. We may well consider first, as before, the principal details. Across some hundred and fifty yards of sloping meadow ground the house faces the sandy road near the point where it passes over a bridge of planks with timber guards, and from here bends to the left under the shadow of a towering elm and a row of firs near the right end of the house. A path from the entrance on this side crosses the roadway to the shed and barn of the farm- yard. Beyond the path thus crossed, the road ascends a slight elevation where, still curving towards the left, it drops from sight between stone walls. Once this might have ranked as practicable description. It is surely neither visual nor inspiring. We shall see again how a little human interest and sympathy will lessen the effort of attention. Lacking Howells’s gift of selection, we shall scarcely hope to reduce or intensify the details that we have provisionally noted. Whittier’s Snow Bound and Barefoot Boy furnish warrant for the means we shall use to engage imagination: From the front of the house, unfenced mowing ground —over which the boy Whittier barefoot may have ven- tured his first strokes with the scythe—slopes towards us some hundred paces to the sandy highway here crossed by a plank bridge with timber guards, “where laughed the brook” through summer days and nights. Beyond this the white road, bending about the house to the left like the right half of a parenthesis, separates it screened by a towering elm and fir-trees from the shed and farm- yard. Here, under the firs and across the road, on the 58 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY night of the great storm, the boys tunneled their ‘“Alad- din” path through the snow to the barn, to “rouse the brutes prisoned within.” Along this roadway, up the gentle ascent at the end of the curve, the “half-buried oxen” of the Whittiers helped wallow out a track at dawn of the next morning, that the sleigh of the wise doctor might make its rounds. This does not compel an exact picture of the view before us. Strive as we may, we shall not come nearer to complete presentation of objects or scenes like the one in question, by words, than the point reached correspondingly in the por- traiture of persons in the last chapter. One of the first essen- tials in any art is to learn its limitations, to find out what it can and what it cannot do. We see again that exactness of detail does not in itself conduce to exactness of visual effect, or to visual effect at all. Systematic description can do little of what the art of the illustrator offers as an embellishment to books. But description of another sort may be more vivid and illuminating than ordinary or even the best engravings. Description does not so much consist in constructing pictures for the reader as in setting out materials in such a way that the reader must from them construct pictures for himself. The common notion of a mason’s work is that he builds or “makes” his wall. In reality, he sets bricks or stones in such positions as to let gravity make the wall. He fulfills condi- tions, and the forces of nature execute and perpetuate his task. Similarly, the artist puts lines and colors on a flat sur- face in such a way that the mind of the beholder cannot help seeing the product as made up of solid elements or parts. The business of the describer, who can use but few lines and col- ors, is still more to fulfill conditions so that the reader’s imag- ination may supply, not only the third dimension, but also reality and life. An ordinary scene or subject may be dispatched in a single unit or paragraph of presentation. Howells, describing the home of Petrarch (Italian Journeys, pp. 224-227), allows him- self not less than five such paragraphs. The general reader should not object to the use of three in presenting the home of Whittier’s childhood. The last of the paragraphs should DESCRIPTION 59 serve as a climax, if possible, to the whole description. Since the house persists as the center of interest, it is evident that we must go back to that. We may approach it now from the other side of the scene: Beyond the woodshed attached to the left end of the house, a few paces away, is the beginning of a grove. This, after the manner of New England hedges, may have sheltered the home somewhat that night when the snow sifted through the cracks in the unplastered walls, as the boys lay listening to the creaking of clapboards and the snapping of frosted nails. It stood against the winds more memorably, on a December morning not many win- ters earlier, while the great chimney sent up abundant smoke overhead, and the boy John Greenleaf lay first upon his mother’s arm. It is helpful here to have noted the scantness of light in the second story. Evidently no one of its four large apartments can have had more than two windows. It would not be out of keeping with our purpose to recognize that one of these must have been the room of the poet’s mother. But this chal- lenge to our fancy, if it is to be used at all, should be intro- duced considerably earlier. Clearly it must not be appended to the sentence last ventured here. The idea in that, in some form or other, may well be utilized to close our task. Some of our readers will perhaps regret that we have not made wider use of our materials. One or another would have had us say more about the stream that ran whispering under the firs to the garden wall, or coursed in winter beneath the ice so mutely that no ripple could be detected by the sharpest ear. Some would have wished us to dwell longer on the sandy road, or the bridge buried a yard deep in snow, or the crawling train of ox-sleds and shouting, wrestling “younger folks.” Others, of more active imaginations or finer feeling, would have us hint of the first thee’s with which the Quaker mother fondled this new son of her hopes. Of course litera- ture deals largely with sentiment, and often introduces it for the sake of itself alone. But it is perhaps unnecessary to re- mind ourselves that, while a certain amount of sympathy is needed to inveigle the reader into spontaneous and unconscious 60 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY exercise of his fancy, all such feeling must be kept subordi- nate to the purpose governing in the case. The object here is to describe a poet’s birthplace, not to write a biography, or restore the inner life of the household. In less formal description, and especially in fiction, the stimu- lative or “feeling” element is often handled with much liberty. This is especially true of writers noted for liveliness and orig- inality of conception. It is interesting to study the variety in examples : A curious home and repository was this same little rude cabin. The interior was just roomy enough to enable a man of my height—six feet—to stand upright and swing a cat in without knocking its brains out against the up- right rough-barked willow posts that made the walls. Yet within this limited space was gathered a store of weapons, tackle, and tools, sufficient to have enabled a small colony of men to fight the wilderness and found a city of the future—Hudson: Idle Days in Patagonia, p. 21. The author here unconventionally reminds us that imagina- tion has its own modes of indicating distance and dimensions. Hawthorne (Mosses, p. 17) thus measures to us the width of the Concord River: The stream has here about the breadth of twenty strokes of a swimmer’s arm,—a space not too wide when the bullets are whistling across. Sometimes the appeal to fancy is reinforced or doubled: It was a place of quiet houses standing beside little gardens. They had the usual names printed on the stucco gateposts. The fading light was just sufficient to read them. There was a Laburnum Villa, and The Cedars, and a Cairngorm, rising to the height of three stories, with a curious little turret that branched out at the top and was crowned with a conical roof, so that it looked as if wearing a witch’s cap. Especially when two small win- dows just below the eaves sprang suddenly into light, and gave one the feeling of a pair of wicked eyes suddenly flashed upon one.—Jerome K. Jerome: The Street of the Blank Wall, p. 7. DESCRIPTION 61 In illustration of descriptive treatment on a larger scale, we may compare an example from Holmes’s Professor's Story, Chapter V. In this the author whimsically presents the chal- lenging attitudes of an Orthodox and a Unitarian Congrega- tional church building, ina New England village of his genera- tion. Seemingly because the spectacle was a familiar one ‘to the public for which he wrote, Holmes reverses the usual process, introducing the appeal to fancy first of all: Two meeting houses stood, on two eminences, facing each other, and looking like a couple of fighting-cocks with their necks straight up in the air,—as if they would flap their roofs, the next thing, and crow out of their up- stretched steeples, and peck at either’s glass eyes with their sharp-pointed weather cocks. Holmes now details, by accurate and appropriate types of form, the features of the former structure: The first was a good pattern of the real old-fashioned New England meeting house. It was a large barn with windows, fronted by a square tower crowned with a kind of wooden bell inverted and raised on legs, out of which rose a slender spire with the sharp-billed weathercocks at the summit. Inside, tall, square pews with flapping seats, and a gallery running round three sides of the building. On the fourth side the pulpit, with a huge, dusty sound- ing board hanging over it. In the next paragraph, the treatment of the Unitarian meet- ing house is managed similarly, with mention first of the style and architecture, and then of the features and furnishings within. From comparison of these and other examples, we find that those who attempt to describe the looks of houses and other structures appear to proceed in the same manner as those who try to present the looks of persons. Both seem to begin, as a matter of course, with general or generic aspects, and then pass at once to such as fix the individuality of the given object. Also, each strives instinctively at the close to conjure up or uncover something that will stamp the suggested whole definitively upon the reader’s or hearer’s mind. 62 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY EXERCISES 1. Select some house of personal interest to you, and, after studying its features, make a description of it and its surround- ings. 2. Choose out a post-card or other picture of a home or home- stead, and write a description. 3. Note and report, in writing, how the appearance and pro- portions of some house or other building have been presented off. hand, orally, in your hearing. 4. Run through some of the short-story literature that you have at hand, and compare the paragraphs of description met with. Copy three of the best examples, with appreciations and com- ments. 5. From some chapter of Dickens, quote an example of precise or detailed description, and show its plan and merits. 6. In some builder’s journal, examine cuts and plans of houses discussed in general terms, and consider how this or that example might be rendered attractive to home-makers by precise descrip- tion. 7. In a periodical like Harper’s Bazar, select from the half- tone illustrations some elaborate house and grounds; and draft out a study that should be visual and do approximate justice to the architect’s and landscape artist’s conception. Clo ked wR oie 19 Bl DESCRIPTION OF NOVEL FORMS W* can only say of a new object, when we try to convey a notion of it to those who have not yet seen it, that it “looks like’? something known familiarly to them as well as to ourselves. , Description is more frequently and properly employed to present objects wholly new, to a given audience, than things well known. We sometimes attempt to describe scenes or things to people who are essentially as well acquainted with them as we ourselves. Our hearers know in advance what we are undertaking, and are perhaps as able as we are to execute the task. Whether we succeed or fail, under such conditions, is of no great moment. But if we have seen some unique phenomenon, as for ex- ample the face of the rock here shown, and should try to pre- sent it without the help of a photograph, to others, we should undertake a veritable and profitable problem in description. We should be expected to make this object imaginable and visual to any attentive reader. The scene, we are told, is the front of a cave which, with the mountain over it, was obliterated by floods ages ago. Our former studies, not excepting those of the last chapter, have not prepared us for such a task. Were we to set about it in the bookman’s way, and try to bring to mind examples sinn- lar, which we might imitate, the ink would dry upon our pens again and again before we should catch the least hint how to begin. In any difficulty of this kind, it is generally best to put all thought of books and the ways of bookmen wholly out of mind, and proceed on the instant, offhand, just as if one were talk- ing or about to talk of the matter in question to some compan- 63 64 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY ion. It is of value always to stop and think, before beginning to write a hard sentence, how we should say it orally. There was natural and effective description long before writing was devised, and there was no dread of mistakes or criticism. Nothing so handicaps good work of any sort as fear, at the outset, that one is not going to succeed. Many of us know how such misgivings unnerve us when we are preparing to write a theme. | So, if some one could have taken our ink and paper away DESCRIPTION OF NOVEL FORMS 65 from us, at the start, and made us feel that we were denied all chance to tell, except in a word, and orally, what the face of this rock makes us think of, we should all perhaps have said immediately, ‘“‘Hoof-marks, one over another, as made by horses on a much traveled road.” Yet, in saying this, we should have accomplished the vital part of a literary descrip- tion. We have perhaps observed that we are never satisfied, on discovering a novel object, to call it a puzzle, a mystery, and | withdraw attention. We instinctively continue inspecting it, until we detect some element or feature that exists in other objects, so that we can associate it with them. In other words, we find ourselves forced to classify it or some part of it. Here, by mentally bracketing the marks upon the rock with the tracks of horses, we seem in some degree to master the whole anomaly, or to add it in a sense to knowledge. To discover these fundamental or fanciful resemblances is a part of what artists call the interpretation of form, and pre- cedes their attempts to draw it. Before we begin to describe . an object, we should study it in outline, and try to realize its — shape by discovering what it resembles. With like purpose, the drawing teacher insists that we study lines and angles, to find the type-elements of form, before we commence a sketch. Here, an artist would prepare to draw the rock by virtually asking and answering these questions in his thought. “What does this part of the cliff most resemble or suggest?” “A gigantic horseshoe, or hoof-mark in soft earth.” “What is the height of the open space under “the arch?” “Imagining a man standing in the brushwood at the base, and inquiring how many times his height would have to be repeated to reach the top, we should answer, “Four or five times,—about twenty- five feet.” “What is the height of the rock?” “Twice the height of the arch, or fifty feet.” ‘“‘What is the distance across the open space at its broadest part?” “By the same standard, fifteen feet.” ‘How far distant are the woods seen through the opening?” “Perhaps half a mile.” “How far below the arch or ridge does the field, rising towards the woods, begin?” “A thousand feet or more.” “What growth partly covers the 66 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY ridge and the descent on each side towards the horseshoe lines?” “Bearberry, or some similar trailing plant.” “What streaks or spots of white are seen beneath?’ “Patches perhaps of snow.” When the artist has found the type, and noted the propor- tions of the parts, he is ready to begin his sketch. We for our part, taking his analysis for ours, have only to determine the focus of interest, or visual center,—which is of course the opening or arch, before bringing the elements together tenta- tively, in descriptive form: From the top of the ridge, here covered with bearberry growth, the face of the rock, fifty feet down, looks as if stamped, in some plastic period, by a gigantic horse’s hoof, which has formed a dark archway half as high as the rock, and left horseshoe outlines in seams around it, as also a vertical crack from the top of the ridge to the top of the arch, twenty-five feet below. Under and beyond the archway, forced through the cliff as by the pointed frog of the enormous foot, are seen grassy fields rising gradually, from a thousand feet below, towards a fringe of woods, in front, half a mile or more away. The picture is of course far from complete. Will the read- er’s interest tolerate further details? Might we say that the top of the arch is filled, for a fourth of the way down, with bright sky and fleecy clouds over and beyond the tops of the woods? Shall we insert that this belt of forest, crossing the top of the arch, is not horizontal, but slants ten degrees to the left? Should the color of the cliff or of the bearberry growth be mentioned? Should it be specified that there are three horseshoe outlines, clearly defined, on the left side of the arch? The mention of the horseshoe type has enabled a visual per- ception in the reader’s mind. The suggestion of snow-patches, seen through the arch a thousand feet below, has helped stimu- late his imagination. But the principle, emphasized in the last chapter, that literary description must be read in its own light, forbids us to complicate the view. In fact, the paragraph is too heavy as it is, and most of all lacks the vital appeal to fancy that we expect. We must drop out our allusion to DESCRIPTION OF NOVEL FORMS 67 hoof-marks, the “frog” and the vertical seam, for the first thing. Then we might flash on the reader’s mind the thought of this cave entrance as left raised and solitary a thousand feet in mid-air—like the topmost arch of an Italian palace wall standing lone and unsupported after the ravages of an earth- quake—to tell the story of awful inundations. How tersely this might be phrased will be illustrated when we have reached the outcome of a harder trial. This task we are now to take up in the Brabled! of describ- ing the Edwin Natural Bridge, which we postponed (p. 18) as too complex, for a first exercise, to undertake. As we turn back to inspect it, we note that its features are not unlike those analyzed and dealt with in the present study. We feel that it will be easy to reduce the unit of difficulty if we proceed after the manner just detailed: “What is the visual center of the scene?” “Clearly the large space beneath the bridge.” “What does the curve of the span make us think of, as a type of form?” “In pro- portions, and at either extremity, it follows lines in the upper half and the pointed ends of a lemon, one that has been pared curvingly on the under side.” ‘What type of structure is discovered?” “A causeway of masonry, in long layers of flat stone.” “What are the proportions of the span?” “Assuming the stature of the men on the bridge to be approximately six feet, we estimate that their distance from the ground is sixteen times their height. The bridge then is a hundred feet high, and two hundred feet long.” “How far from the bridge was the camera placed, when the view here used was taken?” “Perhaps two hundred yards.” “Was the instrument set over against the middle of the arch?” “No, but opposite the right end.” It is helpful, in first studies of this kind, to bring together orally the features to be used in the proposed description. It will be well also, for the time being, to have two or more stu- dents work thus together, each noting the effect of the other’s sketch, and supplying its defects. Here one might, at a ven- ture, propose to his companion this: The two-hundred foot span of the Edwin Natural Bridge, which in shape and color makes one think of an 68 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY unripe lemon one fourth pared away on the under side almost to the points at either end, opened in front of us the strong afternoon light, against which the bushes showed sharply defined below, and men, looking no big- ger than their boots, who had stopped to look down at us, stood in relief above. Then the critic of the paragraph, presumably, will say: “You give no hint that the ridge is made up of long layers of rock. It is not right to leave that out. You mention the figures above before you give them a place to stand. Pray, how is it possible for men to look no taller than the boots they wear? You say nothing about the boulders scattered over the ground below. And you speak as if an unripe lemon were shaped differentiy from a ripe one.” After such points have been considered, the second experimenter will handle the materials in his way, and in turn receive the strictures of his companion. Each member of the groups severally may now try his hand at throwing together the first draft of a description for sub- mission to the class for judgment. But as we are not likely to satisfy ourselves in less than two or three experiments, let us make trial of what can be done informally,—as if, on a tour of the mountains in Utah, we were each sending a report in letters home of what we have discovered here: From our position, thirty rods or more from the Edwin Natural Bridge, which we faced, the top of the two- hundred foot span seemed as high as a steeple, and men passing along the roadway over it, and now pausing to look down at us, appeared no taller than toy soldiers. Under them was the huge arched space, showing the form of a lemon—and even the color of one not yet ripened fully—pared on the under side almost to the conical pro- tuberances at either end, and opening to us, over boul- ders fringed with bushes, the western glow of a perfect afternoon. This is something like, at least in spirit, what the public of the day demands. We must preserve this touch-and-go qual- ity, the organic freedom and naturalness of this manner, at whatever cost. But, on comparing our two trial paragraphs, we see that the visual center of the description cannot be DESCRIPTION OF NOVEL FORMS 69 shifted from the arch, and that the picture loses definiteness and sureness of effect from mentioning, before it, the presence of the men. The purpose of description here is to make the reader see in his mind’s eye a bridge that has stood for ages, and not the temporary presence on it of foot-passengers or workmen. We must take care not to draw attention from the foreground or essentials of a picture by arousing interest in side details. What the subject calls for is a more considered treatment that will force the mind to distinguish important parts and yet hold them visually ina whole. The right product will thus include, with some sort of a climax at the end, most of these elements or features: In the wall-like ridge of laminated rock, the two-hun- dred-foot span, forming the Edwin Natural Bridge, opens before us the low western light in the cast and with the color of an enormous unripe lemon, pared, on the under side, nearly a third away, and fringed with bushes almost to the pointed protuberance at either end. Along the road- way, a hundred feet above, five travelers or workmen stand in line near the edge, facing us, to be taken into the picture. Beneath the bridge, boulders, some of them not yet rounded, strew the now dry bed of vast floods that broke and swirled their way through their mountain bar- rier thousands of years ago. On the basis of these suggestions, the paragraph may now be cast in final shape. Each member of the class should try not only to actualize, working by himself, his personal notion as to the degree of distinctness and vividness that the case calls for, but also gratify his sense of sound and form. Of course, after overcoming the difficulties which engage us here, the sub- ject will have grown somewhat stale. But with sufficient prac- tice in such studies, we can make our selection and grouping of parts less formal, and should be able finally to unite both in a single intuitive process, at the first attempt. We can realize at this point more fully the importance of distinctive ideas, or types, of form. Without discovery and use of the lemon outline, or some other example of the same basic contour, in the arch, we could not have proceeded with the de- scription. If there had been no style or model of a colonial 70 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY farmhouse to refer to, in the last chapter, we should hardly have succeeded in making the Whittier home visual to any reader. The chief difference between the two examples lies in the fact that the fundamental idea in the Whittier house is obvious, while in the Edwin Bridge it is not, but must be ana- lyzed and interpreted out of the phenomenon at first hand. The problem of the cave, first in this chapter, stands midway in difficulty between the others, in that its essential lines are not obvious, yet are not difficult to identify. Indeed, the most untrained observer would undoubtedly come in time to recog- nize and remark that the curve above the entrance was of the horseshoe “order,” thus illustrating that the common mind, in its attempts at description, instinctively finds a class, though all unconsciously, for each novel form or object. The type figure in the Edwin Bridge is perhaps as hard to decipher as the most of those that are utilized in literary de- scription. The difficulty might seem to lie in the great size of the arch and ridge. But novel objects of small proportions are often far from easy to analyze. The half-tilted stone below the right end of the bridge would be hard to draw unless one detected in it the pose and essential figure of a frog. Many illustrations of like kind from literature might be cited. Keene Abbott pictures a stretch of horizon with these type-elements: The sky was blue, ever so blue, and all silver-notched at the edge, and tepeed with snowy mountain peaks. - This example is hardly less apt and striking: This eminence is a long ridge rising out of the level country around, like a whale’s back out of a calm sea, with the head and tail beneath the surface. Maupassant, in like manner, but with a minimum of effort, shows a very different picture: The Seine appears like a coiled snake, asleep, of which we do not see either the head or tail. It crosses Paris, and the entire field resembles an immense basin of prairies and forests dotted here and there by mountains, hardly discernible in the horizon. DESCRIPTION OF NOVEL FORMS 71 Hewlett brings thus to fancy the generic lines in a fringe of woodland: Leaving the high road on his right hand, Prosper struck over the heath towards a solemn beech-wood which he took to be the very threshold of Morgraunt. As a fact it was no more than an outstretched finger of its hand, by name Cadnam Thicket. The following, from Frances D. Little’s Sketches in Poland (p. 24), is a good illustration of the more typical literary manner: Those mountains are above the snow-line, but so steep that snow cannot lie on them. A little lower is the Gie- wont, which shows from Zakopane the enormous profile and stark breast of a warrior, as if laid out for funeral on the summit of the hills. The peasants say he will awake one day, and blow upon his bugle such a blast as shall rouse all the armies of the dead, and will lead them to deliver Poland. Compare Howells’s way of presenting the streets or roads that divide the village of Arqua, in the story of his visit (Jtal- tan Journeys, p. 221), to the home of Petrarch: I am here tempted to say that Arqua is in the figure of a man stretched upon the hill slope. The head which is Petrarch’s house rests upon the summit. The care- lessly tossed arms lie abroad from this in one direction, and the legs in the opposite quarter. We followed our guide up the right leg, which is a gentle and easy ascent in the general likeness of a street. Old-world stone cot- tages crouch on either side. A less daring and less compelling type-idea is used by Fogaz- zaro, in The Sinner, to suggest certain rugged features in the large: Imagine the monstrous, horned, great-grandsire of all elephants barring the broad way, his flat skull thrust for- ward into the sunlight and upholding the burden of a colossal pyramid, his swollen flanks fading out into the shadow behind. So, between two narrow valleys, carved 72 HOW .TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY out by the strokes of a god, does the spur supporting Vena di Fonte Alta stretch outward from the base of Picco Astore, its two horns fronting the great stone quarry of Villascura. Towering above the abyss encircling them, the fir forests and beech groves of Vena sway against a background of sky, here and there spotted with pale emerald,—where the fields thrust them asunder and over- spread, and dotted here and there with red and white where cottages are crowded together in groups. He who surveys them from the summit of the steep and towering Picco Astore, or of the lofty, cloud-crested mountains of Val Posina, may not respond to their tender and refining influence. Yet the traveler who threads their sinuous depths asks himself whether, when the world was young, this were not the scene of the brief loves of sad genii, of the hills and of glad spirits of the air, whether the earth, in deference to their altering moods, did not transform itself about them again and again, now tendering leafy bowers for reposeful meditation, now encircling them with scenes of mirth or sadness, of deep thought or merry sport,—all which ceasing as the lovers on a sudden dis- appear, the spot retains for ever the shape it last as- sumed. To instance an example of ambitious description, designed to attract and charm through the fiction of a medizval visit to Italy, we quote from Hewlett’s Earthwork, at the opening of Chapter V. We note that the generic or type idea and the appeal to fancy are here again brought close together: “There,” said my Roman escort, as we forded the Tiber near Torgiano, “the haze is lifting: behold august Peru- gia.” I looked out over the misty plain, and saw the spiked ridge of a hill, serried with towers and beliries as a port with ships’ masts; then the grey stone walls and escarpments warm in the sun; finally a mouth to the city, which seemed to engulph both the white road and the citi- zens walking to and fro upon it like flies. To close our illustrations with a specimen of clear and care- ful writing, we select the following passage from Stevenson. It is of course remarkable for its typical construction as well as its vividness and simplicity: Down in the bottom of a bow! of forest, the lights of the little town glittered in a pattern, street crossing street. DESCRIPTION OF NOVEL FORMS 73 Away by itself on the right, the palace was glowing like a factory. We may sum up our findings in this chapter by observing that Stevenson here presents the forest by forcing us to visual- ize it as a tremendous bowl. Similarly, he shows the town by classing it with a piece of goods or carpet woven in bright squares with pattern regularity. For a climax, he makes us see the palace with all its windows equally aglow by appealing to our memory of some huge factory lighted up for work at night. Finding thus the common element that enables us to classify the novel object with a familiar one is an act or proc- ess of “interpretation.” This is what has happened when we say that the novel object “looks like” some other object that we and our readers know familiarly. When we have so classi- fied, the unfamiliar thing falls heir to the acquaintance we have with the basic form, and becomes mentally visual with it. EXERCISES 1. Sketch out a plan for the presentation of some scene or scenery that you have at some time thought of as desirable to describe. Determine the interpretative type, the main details, and. the stimulating close, and lay aside for later execution. 2. From a photograph, or from memory, make a description of the Washington Monument. 3. Study the presentation, in Howells’s Italian Journeys, of Petrarch’s house. Write a careful summary and appreciation. 4. Recall, from recent reading, some good description of natu- ral scenery. Reread, and report concerning its worth and manner. 5. Keep in mind to observe, for a later report, how people pre- sent orally, on the spur of the moment, the appearance of new objects, and with what success. 6. From Dickens, quote and discuss the description of some house and surroundings, as of Miss Havisham’s home in Great Expectations. 7. Try whether you can present visually the interior of some house with which you are familiar. 8. Report whether the plat of your city, or farm or village, fur- nishes or follows any palpable idea of form. Show whether other related types, if a description were called for, might be utilized. 74 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY 9. Work out the plan of the description outlined and prepared for in Exercise I, and cast in finished form. 10. Recall to mind some huge structure, or vast natural object, that you have at some time seen, and describe it visually. 11. Choose out some important public building in your city or neighborhood that has impressed you by its majesty or strength, determine its basic principle of form, and describe it as visually and vividly as you can. 12. Show what figure is discoverable in the outline of a cliff, or of hills, or forest, or mountains, which you have at one time or another seen, or perhaps live in sight of daily. Sketch out a plan for use in a detailed description. 13. From your reading in current magazines or other literature quote and evaluate two examples of description under the present head of novel objects. | 14. Construct, from fancy, some sea, or landscape, or mountain view, and present as clearly and vividly as you can, making it your second finished study in these exercises. CHAPTER VIII DESCRIPTION OF LESSER AND MORE FAMILIAR OBJECTS HE fundamental element in description, as in drawing, is the governing line or angle. When we have discoy- ered this vital and enabling part, in any given object, we can generally describe it, as well as sketch it, with little difficulty. We have seen how the center of interest in a large object helps us grasp and express its unity in description. This unity, as has just been shown, may be classed and indicated un- der some especial type of form. We can now employ the same process for shorter and simpler studies, and by the discovered type outline, force the given object upon our reader’s imagination. Let us suppose that we have the problem of describing this figure of a clock. Its type is peculiar, being shaped to allow the swinging of a pendulum within the case. We are conscious of the form as familiar, but we cannot for the moment identify or recall it. Presently we recognize that the fundamental lines are the same, es- sentially, as those seen in a pair of sheep shears or grass shears. We note the shape at the top, the slope and angle on each side, and wonder whether the designer was aware that he was appropriating a type idea. In any case, we may describe by stating that this clock borrows the outline of a pair of grass shears, its circular part containing the works and face, while the points of the blades, attached to a concave moulding, surmount the ends of a rectangular box, 75 76 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY half the diameter of the face in depth, which holds the key for winding. Now that our attention is called to the underlying idea of form in this picture, we realize that various conventional shapes of clock-frames are borrowed from common things. We at once recall the plain box pattern, the gravestone figure, the type of the sheep’s head, and of the banjo model. When we have discovered such unifying form, in any object, we know that we can communicate or express that object. It is only by parts known to our reader that we can indicate to him a whole that he does not know. By appeal to the fundamental lines in a sheep’s-head-and-ears, in a banjo, a pair of grass shears, or any other determinable type of form, we can make him image the outline of the clocks respectively prefigured, whether he is willing or not willing to be told. Thus is imagination in general more concerned with the framework, the geometry of an object, than with the details of its construction. If the governing line or lines in which such object is designed be given, our imaging powers will for the most part make over the outline, supplying the third di- mension, into a finished likeness. We have no doubt been taught that the essential element in all work of the painter is right drawing. It is not less vital in description. Not only will the exact line or angle bring with it, on mention, other features, but it will often stimulate the mind to construct the whole appearance of the person or object to be described. Note the effect, upon imagination, of this very ordinary illus- tration: _ The conductor stood leaning towards the orchestra, dur- ing the whole interruption, with his baton at an angle of forty-five degrees, while he waited to resume. From the suggestion of this angle, we picture the pose of the conductor, and with this, imagination goes on to produce the orchestra, which he faces, and then also the audience behind him. Our minds catch the pose, and complete the image, simi- larly, in less public or formal situations: DESCRIPTION OF MORE FAMILIAR OBJECTS 77 He sat facing me, and resting his elbow on the chair arm, while he held his pen towards me horizontally, at the level of his chin. We easily realize how the governing idea in each of these examples enforces the picture: The fresh harrow-lines seemed to stretch like the chan- nellings in a piece of new corduroy. The thousand-acre wheat field was enclosed by a zig- zag rail fence, seven feet high, with its stakes set at the angle of sawhorse legs. In the center of a group of boys sprawling on the ground sat one prim figure, bolt upright, making one think of a carpenter’s square set up on edge. The weather had turned cold again. It was freezing hard. The gutters, congealed while still flowing, were surfaced with two ribbons of ice alongside the pavements. The gatepost was not a disused twenty-four pounder with a shot in its muzzle, as so many posts are, but a real architectural post, cast from a pattern at the foundry. His face was almost the face of the caricature Ameri- can: slightly curved vertical lines enclosed his mouth in their parenthesis. Here the description is ineffectual until we reach the final word. Then through the type-form mentioned, the whole face be- comes definitely visual. A “type” of form is a shape that has been recognized as dis- tinct and constant. The form of the harp in the days of min- strelsy is such a type. The angle of the joint in the hind leg of a horse is a type-form, and is called a gambrel. When houses began to be built with roofs of double slant, each side showing the same angle as the hind leg of a horse, the inno- vation was called a gambrel roof. The house in which Haw- thorne was born furnishes a good example. When a type-form is borrowed, as here from the hind leg of a horse, we give it the name of the object which exhibits it, 78 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY and call the word so used a figure. Thus, “gambrel,” as the name of the hock joint of a horse, is literal, but as the name of a roof, or the stick showing two gambrel angles and used by butchers, it is a figure. The same is true more notably of “pyramid,” which seems to have been used originally as the name of an Egyptian tomb, but in time came to be applied, as a figure, to its distinctive form. SS SS aeaittage i PE Fa PS feel let BAW || meee Kis B —, = PZ SRW MS er 23 Zz SINS In all like instances in which we appeal to our hearer’s or reader’s knowledge of type forms, as seen in familiar objects, we describe by figures. This is clearly due to necessity rather than to choice. To state again the principle, which is too little realized, we cannot make an object that is unknown to our reader visual to him except by lines or elements that he has seen. We cannot guide his conceptions in any other way. We may well dwell for a moment upon the variety of figures used thus in description: Kidd could see the finger of the dial stand up dark against the sky like the dorsal fin of a shark. DESCRIPTION OF MORE FAMILIAR OBJECTS 79 The end of the white-framed arbor was rounded at the top much like the roof of a baker’s wagon. In the grey distance the big band-stand of a watering- place stood up like a giant mushroom with six legs, At the middle of the ravine, a mound of broken stoné, fifty feet high and shaped like a big inverted basin, sup- ported the spans of steel. The black dredge, poised in air before us, had a form like a grocer’s sugar-scoop, cut square at the closed end, and attached at right angles to a beam. As it was not a time for standing among trees, we ran out of the wood and up and down the moss-grown steps which crossed the plantation fence like two broad-staved ladders placed back to back. When the resemblance is more vividly discerned, the figure changes (p. 267) from simile to metaphor. Instead of con- ceiving the thing to be described as like the object exhibiting the type, we pretend that it is the object itself: Here is Constantine, the phenomenal city, guarded by a serpent writhing at its feet, the Roumel, which might have been dreamed of by Dante, flowing at the bottom of an abyss. When we came out again the balloon was balancing, enormous and transparent, a prodigious golden fruit, a fantastic pear which had ripened, covered by the last rays of the setting sun. As was shown in the last chapter, it 1s instinctive thus to classify objects, for the moment, in order to describe them. This instinct manifests itself in our earliest years. Often, in its first discernments of type relations, it shows all the keen- ness of the maturest mind. A child of two that had learned certain letters of the alpha- bet from painted blocks, on seeing the new moon for the first time, exclaimed excitedly, “Big D up high.” It could not help distinguishing the curved type line of the letter, and classifying the moon as a new example of the capital “D.”’ Ruskin speaks similarly, in the first chapter of Preterita, of watching, at an 80 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY age not greater, “a marvellous iron post, out of which the water carts were filled through beautiful trap-doors, by pipes FIGURE I like boa-constrictors.” “The carpet,” he tells us further, “and what patterns I could find in bed-covers, dresses, or wall-papers to be examined, were my chief resources.” Most of us remember how we used to identify, in childhood, familiar shapes in frescoes, in forms of clouds, or distant mountains, or the outline of a grove or forest. Many of us doubtless have not altogether disused this faculty in later years. But our earlier education should have en- sured, along with the development of inner discernment, the strengthening of our powers of outer perceiving and knowing. It is not the business of the artist to do our observing for us. His function is not so much to show us new things as to make us see familiar things more intimately. The mind trained to detect the vital elements of form in common objects is never at a loss how to describe. Almost everything that it observes will remind it of some type origi- nal. There is an almost unlimited array of duplications. There are also combinations of types in many instances. We can il- lustrate with this design of a receptacle for flowers. It is evident that the object here shown (Fig. 1) is not constructed on the legitimate lines of a vase. The typical form of the proper vase was fixed (Fig. 2) centuries ago, and school children are taught to draw it thus, from memory, at a moment’s notice. But the outline of the flower-holder, in Fig. 1, borrows first the idea of a cylinder or shaft, its height being three times its diameter. FIGURE 2 It shows a top flaring with the curves at the muzzle (Fig. 3) of a blunderbuss, DESCRIPTION OF MORE FAMILIAR OBJECTS 81 and cut (Fig. 4) into curved lattice lines and spaces. Between the shaft and the base, which is of the type known as cavetto, is introduced a moulding with convex edge. Thus there are combined here five distinct types of form, only the last two being appropriate to a vase. When we have recognized these fundamental ele- ments, we can use them as familiar parts to en- force a conception of this novel object upon the reader’s mind. When the governing line or angle cannot be shown, but may be appealed to in the memory of the reader, the effect is often equally visual and strong. The following, from Holmes’s Professor's Story, brings back to us the essence of what we have often seen: Mrs. Peckham laid her large, flaccid arm in the sharp angle made by the black sleeve which held the bony limb her husband offered, and the two took the stair and struck out for the parlor. FIGURE 3 FIGURE 4 Type forms of which we are merely subconscious will often dis- close themselves, if insistently summoned, and serve us with sur- prising vividness and power. I have chanced, for example, to see a rugged tree leaning over a steep rock at the border of the sea. I wish to put this tree and its wild surroundings into my portfolio, so to speak, of subjects and materials for description. I expect, at some time or other, to make use of the scene. But I shall not succeed in making it visual to anybody unless I can draw the tree. I soon be- come aware that its outline is not new, but I cannot identify the lines or angles that describe it. If I could bring back its type, I am sure that I could immediately call up a visual image to every 82 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY reader. At length I discover and supply the figure, and I set down that the old olive tree, shaped like the frame of an ancient, pert in the art of seeing, of observa- tion. It is necessary next, to possess the power of instant and complete analysis,—the power, that is, of re- solving things that we do not know into parts or elements that we do know. “All art is seeing and say- ing.” Observation and analysis make up the first half of this whole of art, and masters in every field agree that it is the harder half. From their testimony we may assure ourselves that we shall hardly fail, if we work or for that matter of a modern, harp, leans out at a height of not less than a hundred feet above the sea, breaking into foam below. The illustrations of this chapter show what a wealth of means we all carry about with us, and how practicable are the tasks of ordinary description. To be expert in the art of writing it is neces- sary to be widely ex- patiently and diligently, of finding a way to say effectively whatever we may have been able to see aright and fully. EXERCISES 1. Identify and explain the various borrowed forms that you have seen in clocks at home or in neighbors’ houses. DESCRIPTION OF MORE FAMILIAR OBJECTS — 83 2. Find and report the typical forms discovered in a gatepost, a gate, a cupola, a business block, a monument, a bracolite lamp, an ink-stand, and a walking-stick. Choose two of these, and write for each a paragraph of description. 3. Find typical lines and make a description, from cut in dic- tionary, of a sikhra. 4. Describe the house in which Hawthorne was born. 5. Report examples of description, through typical forms, in current or other literature. 6. Identify the typical line utilized and describe a tennis racket. 7. Find and report upon as many borrowed types of form in women’s hats of the period as you can. Describe three of these examples. 8. Make a description, through some new form-type discovered since the last exercise, of another residence in your city. g. Write a paragraph of appreciation or criticism on the ef- fectiveness and propriety of the typical forms used in this de- scription : He liked to let the work wait while he looked over the Thal and noted the attenuated columns of smoke rising like exclamation points from the tenant farms. 10. Report upon the frequency and success of Kipling’s descrip- tions of familiar things. 11. Describe the Zeppelin balloon. 12. Describe, from cut under this word in the dictionary, the yak. 13. Describe the Japanese coin called kobang. 14. Describe, as shown in dictionary, the gila monster. CHAPTER IX DESCRIPTION OF TYPES OF COLOR T has been shown that, in addressing imagination, a part is often equal to the whole. Any attempt to present the looks and presence of a person by a summary of details, instead of two or three suggestive elements, has been found to be inef- fectual. We have just seen how the governing line or angle will arouse our minds, for the purposes of description, to more organic and definite visualization than any detailed effort to present the whole of which it is a part. The principle is notably illustrated when the part is a color. Often, by indicating to the reader an exact hue or shade, we can make the entire object exhibiting it visual to his fancy. Writers whose sense of color is acute make large use of this open secret. Hardy furnishes a good first example: The lightning now was of the color of silver, and gleamed in the heavens like a mailed army. Every hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a line engraving. A poplar in the immediate foreground was like an ink-stroke on burnished tin. This picture gives us no hint as to the form of the objects named, or even of the shapes traced out by the gleams of light- ning. Yet the author has made us see a countryside with hedges, trees, and bushes, as also the sky above it. He tells us that the lightning was of a silver hue, and we immediately make streams of lightning after our own notion, to display this hue, and we create a sky for them to shine in. He says that a poplar in the foreground looked black as an ink-stroke on new tin, and we construct a poplar tree—which in nature is gray green—and set it black against this screen of silver light. Hardy has furnished us nothing precise except the colors. With these, we conceive a scene that, to us, is precise and defi- nite in all details besides. 84 DESCRIPTION OF TYPES OF COLOR 85 Evidently each color here is a certain something not less significant and peculiar than the types of form studied in pre- ceding chapters. Like them it is an elemental notion that stands distinct and constant in our minds. By presenting a “type” color, Hardy brings the generic thing mentioned as ex- hibiting it along with it concretely in our thought. By a color thus he makes us see the whole of which the color is a char- acteristic part. The view he gives us is of course not the veritable scene except its hues. But if he had tried by other means to make it more accurately visual, it would perhaps not have become visual at all. Typical forms are distinguished perhaps more exactly, by the most of us, than strictly typical divisions of color. Per- sons not endowed with an active sense of color take little pains to exercise it. Yet, speaking generally, types of form arouse imagination less quickly and completely than types of color. Tennyson shows an almost sensational mastery of description by these means: Deep on the convent roof the snows Are sparkling to the moon; the loud stream Forth issuing from his portals in the crag Ran amber to the west; they that heard it sigh’d... Till the fountain spouted, showering wide Sleet of diamond drift and pearly hail. Authors often borrow this expedient of color, without defi- nite suggestion of form, in attempts at exact description: When evening came I crept down to the port, went on board, and crowded myself up in the hole of a cabin among ropes and sails, and went to sleep at once, and did not wake again till we arrived within a short distance of the most magnificent mountain imaginable, rising in a peak of white marble ten thousand feet straight out of the sea—Curzon: Monasteries of the Levant, p. 241. The earth shakes, and in front of me, from an open- ing not bigger than a man’s head, issues with vast force a tremendous jet of flame and vapor, while from the edge 86 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY of this hole pours the liquid sulphur, gilded by the fire. It gathers immediately into a saffron lake around this fan- tastic spring. Farther away, other apertures throw forth white steam, which lifts itself heavily in the blue air.— Maupassant: The Wandering Life, p. 66. For more expert description through the stimulus of color, we naturally turn to authors who, like Ruskin, are also artists or art-critics. Théophile Gautier, who was a painter as well as man of letters, furnishes remarkable examples of this kind. We quote the following passages from his Spanish papers: A pitiless, blinding light penetrated everywhere. The sky was like molten metal, the paving-stones shone as if they had been waxed and polished, the white-washed walls sparkled like mica. Not far from the old San Domingo convent, in the Antequerula quarter in Granada, on the slope of a hill, rose a dazzlingly white house, which shone like a silver block amid the dark-green foliage of the surrounding trees. This crenellated, massive tower, glazed with orange and red, against a background of crude sky, with an abyss of vegetation behind it, the city on a precipice, and in the distance long mountain chains veined with a thousand tints like African porphyry, forms a splendid and majestic entrance to the Arab palace. A spectacle of which the Northern peoples can form no notion, is the Alameda in Granada. The Sierra Nevada, the notched outline of which infolds the city on that side, assumes unimaginable tints. All the slopes, all the sum- mits, smitten by the light, turn rose-color, but a dazzling rose, ideal, fabulous, silver-frosted, striped with iris, and opaline reflections that would make the purest colors on a painter’s palette seem muddy, mother of pearl tones, ruby transparencies, veins of agate and aventurine which would challenge the fairy jewels of the Thousand and One Nights. Valleys, crevices, windings, every spot which the rays of the setting sun do not reach, all turn into a blue which vies with the azure of the sky, of ice, of lapis lazullt, of sapphire. This contrast of tone between the light and shadow has a marvelous effect: the mountain seems to have arrayed itself in changing, spangled, silver-ribbed silk. DESCRIPTION OF TYPES OF COLOR 87 Generic hints of form, like block, that is “cube,” in the sec- ond example, if such could have been supplied throughout, would have aided imagination materially here. Ruskin’s de- scription of the Falls of the Rhine gives us even fewer sug- gestions of proportion and outline: Stand for half an hour beside the fall of Schaffhausen on the north side where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first bends, unbroken, in pure pol- ished velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick—so swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from above darts over it like a fallen star; and how the trees are lighted above it under all their leaves, at the instant that it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that foam burn with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light. Scenes such as have been presented thus far in this chapter obviously engage attention because of greatness of the forces displayed, or vastness of view, or intensity of sense appeals. The spirit of the spectacle has in each case inspired the writer, who in turn intends and expects, by his description, to arouse the imagination of his reader. As in contrast with this kind of presentation, let us study the spirit and manner of the fol- lowing examples: He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which the scrape had turned the color of an unripe black- berry.—Hardy. The houses scattered in little groups throughout the land are of a remarkable color, not black, nor white nor yellow, but exhibiting the shade of roast turkey.—Gautier. They were breaking up the masses of curd before put- ting them into the vats; and amid the immaculate white- ness of the curds Tess D’Urberville’s hands showed them- selves of the pinkness of the rose—Hardy. Down it there came in a drowsy amble an old white bob- tail horse, his polished coat shining like silver when he 88 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY crossed an expanse of sunlight, fading into spectral pale- ness when he passed under the rayless trees—James Lane Allen. He walked down Gillingham Street on the left-hand side, glancing across at the house-fronts opposite until he saw clean curtains in the same window with a card of chocolate color declaring in silver letters that here were vacant rooms. A dirty girl, presenting the heels and soles of spring-side boots to his view, was cleaning steps al- ready less dirty than herself.—Robert McDonald. The apple trees were in blossom, the roosters crowed on the compost heap. The whole house seemed empty, the farm hired men had gone to the fields to take up their spring tasks He stopped by the gate and looked over into the yard. The dog was sleeping outside his kennel. Three calves were slowly walking, in single file, towards the pond. A big gobbler was strutting before the door, parad- ing before the hen turkeys like a singer on the opera stage.—Maupassant. The last paragraph, as we note, is not dependent like the others upon sense appeals of color, yet is hardly less definite and pictorial. All of the examples here deal with the every- day life of common folk. They are seen to correspond to what is known in painting as genre work. ‘The effect from treatment of this kind is often not less clear and satisfying than from the species of description first considered in this chapter. In the present illustrations there is nothing sensa- tional or surprising, there is no epic appeal to imagination, there are no scenes or features of surpassing beauty. The forces engaged within us are not of sublimity, but of sym- pathy, of interest in the domestic concerns of people. We are glad to be admitted, for the moment, to silent and unseen par- ticipation in the idyllic life portrayed. The subjects in the last examples, the attitude in each instance of the author’s mind, and the effect of the descriptions severally, belong to what is known in literature and art as Realism. It is thus clear that there are two divisions of description, as indeed of literature at large. As there are two forms of treatment, there should be also two classes of subjects, and two kinds of inspiration. Sublime spectacles like the sky DESCRIPTION OF TYPES OF COLOR 89 gleaming with silver lightning, the mountains of Granada, and the Falls of Schaffhausen, call for serious and elevated treat- ment. With the strength of the hills and the wild forces of the lightning, the cataract, and the earthquake are associated, though distantly, the martial or chivalrous in human endeavor, and the mysterious or portentous in outside life. All subjects calling similarly for imaginative or impassioned handling, and involving sentiment more than facts or knowledge, are prop- erly classed together under the general name Romantic. Our studies have been carried on mainly, in previous chap- ters, with instances borrowed from the romantic class of liter- ary materials. Art began with this sort of inspiration, and the first literature was a literature of will and passion. The youth of a race is strenuous, and makes history by magnify- ing the deeds of kings and chieftains. Under a riper civiliza- tion, peoples furnish the subject matter for history, and their kings serve them. ‘The literature of the hearth displaces the literature of the camp fire. This does not mean that Realism is a nobler form of literature than Romanticism. Both are necessary and normal, and should be studied with equal care. The effectiveness of realistic description is often increased by the device of presenting the scene or object as having been discovered, not by the writer, but some proxy. We see better, in such cases, through the eyes or experiences of another. These further examples of color, from Hardy, will illustrate: Oak saw coming down the incline before him an orna- mental spring wagon, painted yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a wagoner walking alongside bear- ing a whip perpendicularly. While she looked a heron arose on that side of the sky and flew on with his face towards the sun. He had come dripping wet from some pool in the valleys, and as he flew the edges and lining of his wings, his thighs, and his breast were so caught by the bright sunbeams that he appeared as if formed of burnished silver. When he drew nearer he perceived it to be a spring van, ordinary in shape, but singular in color, this being a lurid red. The driver walked beside it, and like his van he was completely red. One dye of that tincture covered 90 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY his clothes, the cap upon his head, his boots, his hands. He was not temporarily overlaid with this color of red- dle: it permeated him. Objects that occasion distinct and unvarying experiences respectively with the sense of touch or of taste or of odor are of the same nature as types of color and types of form. They are often used by writers skilful, like Turgenev and Hardy, in realistic description. The odors severally of nuts, of a fog of flour, of new-mown hay, of flowers, of mist, are all typical, since they have produced at some time or another, with the most of us, experiences that are persistent and individual. The following paragraphs,—again from Hardy,—appeal to our memory of these typical sensations: Bob shut the trap, the roar ceased, and they went on to the inner part of the mill, where the air was warm and nutty, and pervaded with a fog of flour. Immediately he began to descend from the upland to the fat alluvial soil below, the atmosphere grew heavier, the languid perfume of the summer fruits, the mists, the hay, the flowers, formed therein a vast pool of odor which at this hour seemed to make the animals, the very bees and butterflies drowsy. The illustrations in this chapter have perhaps helped us to realize more clearly the nature and manner of our acquaintance with the outside world. We refer each fresh sensation to some class of experiences had already, or, if the sensation be new, we set up with it a new class in which to place further experiences of this kind. When we describe by form or color or any other product of sensation, we do not impart. We merely appeal to notions of form or color or taste or touch or odor that our reader brings with him. We cannot do more by language than make him summon and combine in thought such type notions or concepts as, from precedent experiences, he has personally acquired. To do more would require that we furnish, by cut or painting, the new sensation and the new notion that the scene or object to be described involves. This explains in a measure the finer sort of realistic descrip- tion illustrated in the last example and in the passage quoted DESCRIPTION OF TYPES OF COLOR 91 (p. 88) from Maupassant. Numberless impressions from idyllic scenes or moments lie half-forgotten in our conscious- ness. Certain aspects or elements of these have at some time Or various times given us delight. New mention of such aspects will make us construct in imagination, with these as parts, new wholes that will repeat our former pleasure. The skilful writer knows how to reach us with an array of pas- toral features as well as with the single drastic sense appeals discussed in Chapter III. We need like him to find out what aspects of country life are always pleasurable, and what are unliterary and inert or worse. Yet few such scenes or situa- tions can not be transfigured, and truthfully, by the light of fancy. Later chapters will lead us farther into this interesting study. EXERCISES 1. By use of a color or of colors, make a greenhouse or a gar- den visual. Change the study, by adding hints of form, into a vir- tually accurate description. 2. Try whether, by mention of an eccentric color in the dress, but without further means, you can make the person displaying it visual. Correct the product, if necessary, by suggestions of form or feature. 3. Find a house that has been painted with a romantic use of color, and another that shows in its scheme of colors a realistic aim. Detail, in a paragraph of discussion, the reason for your judgments. 4. Construct a visual sketch of a country scene in winter, with an expanse of snow, an evergreen tree standing alone in it, and with smoke rising in the distance from farmhouse chimneys. 5. With the hint of this fancy study, effect a description of some actual country scene in winter, using colors mainly or con- trasts of color. 6. Find examples, in current magazines, of description by means of color, and discuss the manner and effectiveness of each, and the degree. 7. Study this passage descriptive of Rome, from the opening sentence of Garibaldi’s Defense of the Roman Republic, by G. M. Trevelyan, and give your impressions and judgment of its literary worth: 92 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Standing on the terrace in front of San Pietro, in Moratorio, look back across the Tiber at the city spread beneath our feet, in all its mellow tints of white, and red, and brown broken here and there by masses of dark green pine and cypress, and by shining cupolas raised to the sun. 8. Recall some display of clouds in striking colors, piled massively overhead, and present the sublime or romantic spectacle by use of colors principally or only. g. Make a study of some landscape or rural scene, and by real- istic means work out a finished description. 10. Describe, from cut in dictionary, the medieval wagon called pluteus. 11. Analyze the colors in an Indian blanket, and determine how far the “types” discovered in them may be used to describe this object, and perhaps other objects connected with it, visually. 12. Recall and present the appearance of some village, seen at distance, with a range of hills or mountains as background, and lighted by hues of nightfall or of early morning. CHAPTER X NARRATION E have seen that certain actions, called Visualizing, in- spire the mind to produce images of the persons sever- ally who perform them. We have now to learn what means will secure the pictorial realization of actions generally, in themselves, without regard to respective actors or results. Narration, as has been said, is in a measure progressive de- scription, To present the successive stages in an event or process involves description of altering or altered aspects. We can exhibit these, or some of these, as we have seen, by using our concepts of form and color. But, if narration is to be spirited and complete, we must do more than display results, step by step of action. We must show visually and progres- sively the acts themselves. Here are also expedients ready for our use. As all novel objects proposed for description can be analyzed into funda- mental lines or elements, familiar to everybody, so all acts or procedures needing to be narrated are resolvable into elemen- tary forms or “types” of movement. A type movement is a mode of motion that we have come to recognize as distinct and constant. The whirling of a windmill, the recoil of a spring, are “type” movements or concepts of this kind. By these familiar means, Nansen (Across Greenland 1. 325) makes us conceive the swift propulsion of the kayaks or seal- skin boats of the Esquimaux, by double-bladed paddles, and the discharge of spears at game, in a scene which he could hardly have presented, by words, in any other way: Now their paddles went like mill-sails as they darted among the floes, now they stopped to force their way or push the ice aside, or to look for a better passage. Now, again, an arm was raised to throw the spear, was drawn back behind the head, held a moment as the dart was poised, then shot out like a spring of steel as the missile flew from the throwing stick. 93 94 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY We note that other type ideas or concepts are brought into service here. Our forefathers long ago found out that the movement of an arrow made them think of nothing so much as of the action of swallows or other birds moving with swift- ness through the air. So when they needed to speak of like speed attained by other objects in the same element, they felt that they could not do better than borrow the idea of “fly,” “flight,” and apply these words as figures to the case in hand. Nansen does not describe the looks of a kayak in these sen- tences, but through the influence of “darted” we are led to create the image of one and make it behave after the manner of a dragon fly on the surface of water or of a fish under it. Also, to express the suddenness and force of the cast, the type notion of “shoot” is instinctively seized upon. For a study of action without hint of human or other spe- cific causation, we may compare various attempts to present the behavior of a geyser. The problem has often been attacked, but with success only as each visitor’s mind is able to resolve the marvel into right classifications of aspect and motion. One finds his figure in the action of a rocket as it leaves its cylinder. Another thinks of the first whiz of water bursting from the nozzle of a fire hose. A third uses the shooting of an oil well. But a master of his art classes the premonitions of an eruption as moaning, gurgling, and splashing. A spurt of boiling water jumps into the air, a wash of water follows from a funnel, the spout of which is torn and ragged like the mouth of a cannon where a shell has burst at discharging. Then the water rises again to lip level with a rush and an infernal bubbling till the heave of the wave laps across the ledge and drives away the man who has come up at the risk of a scalding to inspect. Here sense appeals of sound fitly precede the first sense ap- peals of sight. Then the concept movements in spurt, jumped, wash, enforce a definite notion of the discharge, to which nothing is wanting except some hint of size. One would have expected the master to supply this, when the concept of “fun- nel” is mentioned, in the next period. The picture is finished by the type notions of bubbling, heave, and lapped. NARRATION 95 Maupassant throws on the screen this moving picture, mak- ing us see a stretch of romantic scenery in contrasted colors, and crowning all by the singular accuracy of his “figures,” or types of motion: The train had just left Genoa for Marseilles, and was rumbling along the rocky coast, gliding like an iron ser- pent between the bay and the mountain, creeping over the beaches of yellow sand, and disappearing suddenly into the black orifices that indicated tunnels, like an animal crawling into its burrow. Whatever querulous critics may have said of Chesterton’s work at large, his powers of analysis in narration and de- scription cannot easily be matched. The figures here, from the opening chapter of Manalive, show us vividly the antics of Innocent Smith, with little suggestion of either motives or personality : Another object came flying after the fluttering panama. It was a big green umbrella. After that came hurtling a huge yellow Gladstone bag, and after that came a figure like a flying wheel of legs, as in the shield of the Isle of Man. But though for a flash it seemed to have five or six legs, it alighted upon two. It took the form of a large light-haired man in gay green holiday clothes. Before they could speculate, the cheering and hallooing hat- hunter was already half up the tree, swinging himself from fork to fork with his strong, bent, grasshopper-like legs, and still giving forth his gasping, mysterious com- ments. He might well be out of breath, for his whole pre- posterous raid had gone with one rush; he had bounded once the wall like a football, swept down the garden like a slide, and shot up the tree like a rocket. It is of course instinctive with everybody to lay hold thus upon concepts of motion as the chief means in narration. The difference between a Maupassant or a Kipling and the com- mon speaker or writer in the readiness and effectiveness of this instinct is one mainly of degree. The ordinary reporter or story-teller often makes shift to present events and incidents in purely literal terms. A bystander, for instance, relates that, after the alarm was sounded, and the office building was in 96 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY flames, a clerk in the fourth story who had been shut off from the elevator was seen to drop from a window, with a rain coat buttoned about his neck, so that, supported somewhat in the fall, he received slight harm. This account will be visual because of horror and sympathy aroused by the fact, but not at all from the manner of treatment, rather indeed in spite of it. A higher instinct of communication would recognize in- stantly and precisely the principle in physics which saved the man, and use it as a “figure” or type idea to intensify the pic- ture. A Chesterton or Ruskin would say, in substance, “The cravenette, buttoned close about the neck of the man, bal- looned round him and played parachute to him as he fell.” But there seems no reason why any schooled narrator should not force his reader, by true literary art, to visualize this “item” vividly, and without more words or hesitation than were incident to the former telling. A more deliberate use of the concept is seen in the device provided for present-day avi- ators, and known as a parachute cloak. The instinct of type-analysis is stronger in the unliterary and untrained mind than we suspect. Now and then we note, in the every-day speech of people, expressions that rival in apt- ness and vividness the figures of our most gifted writers. A lady remarks that she has begun to “trombone” the books she tries to read, and must resort to glasses. A carpenter, laid off with his arm in a sling, explains that he “guillotined’’ his wrist when a sash gave way. A policeman tells the magis- trate that he has been obliged to “snake” his man much of the way to the station. The tenth-grade schoolboy, injured when the elevator dropped, says of the speed, “We ‘meteored’ into the basement.” The difference between higher and lower instincts of type expression is seen rather in the readiness and frequency than the intensity of examples. There is no one of us who does not, upon occasion, dignify himself by “incar- nating the soul of a fact,” through a flash of deep seeing into its elements, with a figure. It would seem possible to do this oftener, through training,—that is, by diligent study of exam- ples, and constant analysis of things observed. In his best moods, Ruskin perhaps ranks first among mas- ters of narration, as of description, in English prose. Com- NARRATION 97 pare his discussion of movements (Queen of the Air II, 68) in the locomotion of the serpent: That rivulet of smooth silver—how does it flow, think you? It literally rows upon the earth, with every scale for an oar; it bites the dust with the ridges of its body. Watch it when it moves slowly. A wave, but with no wind! A current, but with no fall! All the body moving at the same instant, yet some of it to one side, some to another, or some forward, and the rest of the coil back- wards. Startle it: the winding stream will became a twisted arrow; the wave of poisoned life will lash through the grass like a cast lance. This is not visual narration merely, it is a statement of fun- damental truths. It is visual because it is scientific and pre- cise. Ruskin’s literary eminence is the outcome of persistent studies in artistic discovery, not of practice in writing. We need to keep constantly in mind his dictum, “All art is seeing and saying.” We are perhaps not fully persuaded that saying cannot precede seeing, or make good in any degree its lack. We teach composition on a theory inconsistent with this truth. Literary genius works in wholly determinable and human ways. It is our business to help search out these ways, since they are presumably, like the discovered processes of genius in other arts, ultimate and practicable modes for the common mind. EXERCISES 1. Identify the movements in the following paragraph, and apply to each, displacing “glided,” “carrying,” and “dragging,” its precise concept name. Also, substitute for “shone” the right type idea, and rewrite the whole, improving if possible the order of parts: On the pavement under the arc light glided a man, on a bicycle, carrying under his arm and dragging a big Christmas tree, its needles shining in the white light. 2. From Kipling, or Chesterton, or Howells, quote and discuss examples of visual narration accomplished by concepts of motion. 98 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY 3. Study these paragraphs, find the concepts of form or move- ment that make them severally visual, and write your judgment of their comparative fitness and value: De Varenne came forward with the air and graces of an old beau, and, taking Madame Vorestier’s hand, im- printed a kiss upon her wrist. As he bent forward at the waist, his long gray hair spread like water on her bare arm. “Tshug?” “Tshug?” said Abou Salem, our Bedouin leader, moving his swinging arms up and down piston fashion to imitate the stride of a camel, then swept the sky from east to west in the course of the sun to ask whether we wished to travel from sunrise to sunset with- out halting the caravan. At a turn in the valley I suddenly caught sight of five telegraph lines so loaded down with swallows that they curved in the middle strangely, forming between pole and pole five garlands of birds. The driver cracked his whip, a cloud of swallows flew off and scattered against the sky. The weighted wires suddenly released, sprang up like the string of a bow. They continued in vibration thus for a long time. Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part of it, licking the rough walls without, and smearing them with damp and slime within; stuffing dank -weeds and refuse into chinks and crevices; floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at work with plane and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon the water, where it lay like wood, or ebbed away in a tangled heap; sucking at the walls, and welling into the secret places of the town, crept the water always, noiseless and watchful; coiled round and round it, in its many folds, like an old serpent. 4. Distinguish the motions of the dog and of the cat, in ordi- nary and at unusual speed, using concept names from the move- ments of the horse. Compose or narrate visually some incident in which these differences appear. 5. Study the various movements of body observed in the gait of persons respectively whom you know, and find right class- NARRATION 99 names to express them. In a paragraph of narration, utilize the type notions that you have seen in two instances of this kind. 6. One of a group of boys examining a clothes-wringer, placed his finger between the rolls, while one of his companions turned the crank. Blood broke out from the end of his finger. Show whether this incident is visual because of the sense ap- peal, or the singularity of the incident, or the manner of narra- tion. Test the effect severally of various concept words that might be used instead of “broke,” in the last sentence, and substi- tute the one ensuring the strongest visual impression upon the general reader. 7. Once, in a tool factory, a workman fell over against a rapidly revolving grindstone, and suffered serious hurt on the chin and shoulder. Find the right type word to describe the injury, and the right concept name to express the action causing it. Substitute the precise type idea for “revolving.” 8. In any current magazine, report the best examples you can _ find of the principles considered in this chapter. 9g. Write a critical appreciation of Kipling’s “Ship that Found Herself,” in The Day’s Work. 10. Study the visual effectiveness in the following, and detail the elements of which you are conscious in the scene: “They play well, finely, to-night,’ said the old man, nodding and twinkling in his bright pleased way. “Kindly clap my hands for me, my Sister.” So the chef d’ orches- tra was gratified by the approval of the paralytic M. Du- noise, which indeed he would have been sorely chagrined to miss—Dehan: Between Two Thieves, p. 4. 11. Exactly what does the paralytic M. Dunoise ask the Sister of Charity to do with his hands, flat and stiff as if made of ivory? What sense appeals are expressed, and what implied? By what means might the transaction suggested in the third sentence be made more visually and intensely realistic? 12, What examples in this chapter are of a romantic, and what of a realistic character? 13. From The Forest Lovers, or some other of Hewlett’s vol- umes, report three examples of concept elements, used incidentally in narration. 14. Recall some peculiar event or happening, and find the con- cepts of form and movement that will make the unique scene visual. CHAPTER XI FORMS OF NARRATION HERE are various forms of Narration, some of which do not call for such elements or expedients as have just been studied. Concepts of movement belong to the highest modes of literary art. Other methods involve art in greater or less degree, but art of a very different kind. We may then profitably acquaint ourselves with some of the more usual as well as the more important modes of presenting meanings proper for narration. It is often unnecessary to exhibit visually all the incidents or parts of incidents that are to be narrated. Unimportant matters will be told unimaginatively, and left to take their chances with the reader. We instinctively save our skill and energy for portions more worth while. This is an example of the simpler sort: Papa and mama sold the brougham and the piano, and stripped the house, and curtailed the allowance of crock- ery for the daily meals, and took long counsel together over a bundle of letters bearing the Rocklington postmark. Here is an array of occurrences, covering many days or per- haps weeks, which is passed over in a summary. But any one of these proceedings might have been expanded, had there been need, into a paragraph of visual treatment. In writing of this sort, little of narrative art is possible, ex- cept the knack of selecting elements to form a proper thread of connection, and prepare the mind of the reader for vital things to follow. Sometimes we do not so much wish to nar- rate details as to indicate units of duration or sequence in de- tails that must be hurried over. Here is an illustration from Dickens: She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a finger to notify that dinner was ready, and 100 FORMS OF NARRATION 101 vanished. We took our seats at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side of him, while Star- top sat at the other. It was a noble dish of fish that the housekeeper had put on the table, and we had a joint of equally choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally choice bird. Here again there is only a bare outline of steps or happenings. It is not the purpose of the writer, or supposed speaker, to make us appreciate the feast socially or gastronomically, which is a usual motive for such mention, but rather to make us con- ceive its implied incidents and experiences as a whole. Where the unit, as in both of these examples, is not each of certain details, but the sum of all, and where there is no disposition to signalize any one of them, we have a simple and unvisual manner of narration which may be known as Summarizing. In narration proper, there is a natural sequence of stages or details which it is largely the business of the narrator to recog- nize. In this Summarizing form, the time sequence may be altered or ignored. In our first example, the piano may well have been sold before the brougham, and the curtailing of the crockery begun before a purchaser could be found for either, and the counselling over letters may have been the first of all. The different steps do not grow out of each other, and do not suffer from being reported out of their natural succession. But in examples like the passage from Dickens, there is an absolute order of progression, which must be respected in any sum- mary of events or acts. A somewhat higher method of narration will single out or emphasize certain details or steps from a whole series, and will make each of these pictorially, and perhaps sensationally, a unit of attention. Incongruous elements and sense appeals will be used to engage imagination. No larger or finer art is likely in general to be employed than was illustrated in our first two chapters. This manner of dealing with events and incidents is wholly correspondent to Descriptive Telling, and may be distinguished as Elementary Narration. This form has been presented in substance already, as will have been recognized, in Chapter IV. But it involves gener- ally and typically greater extension and more details than were 102 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY there exhibited. Stevenson’s Black Arrow and Treasure Island, so far as narrative, are made up in the main of para- graphs ranking no higher than the examples cited. Each of these works is composed with consummate care, and illustrates how Elementary Narration may be kept at the level of litera- ture proper. This form is used most often in gossip, “yarns,” common letter writing, and in fiction of the Beadle dime- novel class, all of which deal typically with things and hap- penings that visualize themselves. Just as one’s appreciation of music begins with melody and advances to counterpoint, so one’s approach to literature, from Mother Goose upward, pro- ceeds by notions that in themselves force pictures upon stolid or unfledged imaginations. Stories of epic or unusual adven- ture, from Homer to present times, including typically the Chansons de Geste, Morte d’Arthur, Nibelungenlied, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, The Scottish Chiefs, Masterman Ready, With Fire and Sword, as also all similar works that appeal to fancy by fact and not by form, lie at this elemental level. Here belong conspicuously reports of scenes, told with plain and awful literalness, from the World War. For fresh and more adequate illustration of Elementary Narration, we shall disregard the claims of periodicals like the lineal descendants of The New York Weekly and The Fire- side Companion,—too much in evidence about us, with their variedly monotonous tales of lariat and gun, and turn to more veritable studies of life and people. We choose a passage from Bjornson’s Arne. Note how the author makes us see the ap- proach and passing of the roysterers through the eyes of the son and his father as our proxies: “Not here, over there,” cried the father, and the boy stepped behind an alder copse. Already the carts were winding round the birch grove. They came at a wild speed, the horses white with foam, drunken people crying and shouting. Father and son counted cart after cart,— there were in all fourteen. In the first sat two fiddlers, and the wedding march sounded merrily through the clear air,—a boy stood behind and drove. Afterwards came the crowned bride, who sat on a high seat and glittered in the sunshine. She smiled, and her mouth drooped on one side. Beside her sat a man clad in blue and with a FORMS OF NARRATION 103 mild face. The bridal train followed, the men sat on the women’s laps. Small boys were sitting behind, drunken men were driving,—there were six people to one horse. The man who presided at the feast came in the last cart, holding a keg of brandy on his lap. They passed by sing- ing and screaming, and drove recklessly down the hill. The fiddling, the voices, the rattling of the wheels, lingered behind them in the dust. The breeze bore up single shrieks, soon only a dull rumbling, and then nothing. Here the one concept element of “winding” has palpable effect upon imagination. The rest of the narrative is strongly pictorial because mainly of general and particular incongrui- ties, of sense appeals, and contrasts,—horses, harnessed to carts, galloping wildly, fiddlers playing or trying to play in spite of the jerking motion, a boy standing up behind and driv- ing, the bride wearing a glittering crown in the flying dis- order, the feast-master holding his arms hard over a keg of _ brandy, and shrieks and screams mingled with the singing. The narration pictures itself and without skill on the part of the author, save in the selection and adjustment of efficient parts. There is always a visual center, or focus of attention, as we remember, in a descriptive study. There is generally a similar point, where the interest centers or should center, in a subject for narration. When there seems to be no such self- designated point or focus, the writer should establish one, and try to make the spirit of the whole inhere in it. The author in this case makes it the bridal cart. The spectacle begins with galloping horses, as they wind about a birch grove before com- ing abreast of those in hiding. This enables the writer to have the number of the carts counted over for us in advance. After the musicians pass, the bride and groom appear, fol- lowed by the bridal train. The procession ends, and only noises linger. But the sight of the bride, seated higher than her guests, and made still more conspicuous by a glittering crown, stands fast in imagination, and holds the other ele- ments in fixed relations with it. : One sees from this example that narration is often essen- tially panoramic. All parts of the spectacle are in existence, and exhibiting their respective aspects of movement at the same 104 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY instant, yet cannot be presented except one unit at a time. There is in reality no time sequence of these units, though we seem, by the manner of our coming into acquaintance with them, to set up one. Yet what is told us is indubitably narra- tion, since the line of carts enters and departs from a given standpoint, and the noise of shouting comes in advance of the wedding party and lingers after they have disappeared. There is evidently a form of narration that will aim to pre- serve time sequence, while supplying all details of the history in hand. Witnesses in court are often ordered to omit no par- ticulars whatsoever, and to report all in the order in which they were observed. Like completeness of observation and testimony is continually called for in outside life. Narration wholly similar is now and then met with in books. A writer, indulging in day dreams or memories, and having no goal in sight, will often run to surprising lengths before he finds a motive to change his vein. The things he has seen or imag- ined may be too trivial for ordinary mention, yet may be ex- alted, through the mood which they inspire, towards the plane of literary worth. They may prove visual by virtue of swift contrasts, of sense appeals, or of realistic human interest. The illustration following is condensed from Hawthorne’s “Toll- Gatherer’s Day,” in Twice Told Tales: Methinks, for a person whose instinct bids him rather to pore over the current of life than to plunge into its tumultuous waves, no undesirable retreat were a toll-house beside some thronged thoroughfare of the land. So, at least, have I often fancied, while lounging on a bench at the door of a small square edifice, which stands between shore and shore in the midst of a long bridge. Beneath the timbers ebbs and flows an arm of the sea; while above, like the lifeblood through a great artery, the travel of the north and east is continually throbbing. Sitting on the aforesaid bench I amuse myself with a conception, illus- trated by numerous pencil sketches in the air, of the toll- gatherer’s day. In the morning—dim gray, dewy summer’s morn—the distant roll of ponderous wheels begins to mingle with my old friend’s slumbers, creaking more and more harshly through the midst of his dream, and gradually replacing it with realities. Hardly conscious of the change from FORMS OF NARRATION sleep to wakefulness, he finds himself partly clad and throwing wide the toll-gates for the passage of a fragrant load of hay. The timbers groan beneath the slow-revolv- ing wheels; one sturdy yeoman stalks beside the oxen, and, peering from the summit of the hay, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished lantern over the toll-house, is seen the drowsy visage of his comrade, who has enjoyed a nap some ten miles long. The toll is paid—creak, creak, again go the wheels, and the huge haymow vanishes in the morning mist. As yet, nature is but half awake, and fa- miliar objects appear visionary. But yonder, dashing from shore to shore with a rattling thunder of the wheels and a confused clatter of hoofs, comes the never-tiring mail, which has hurried onward at the same headlong, restless rate, all through the quiet night. The bridge re- sounds in one continued peal as the coach rolls on with- out a pause, merely affording the toll-gatherer a glimpse of the sleepy passengers, who now bestir their torpid limbs and snuff a cordial in the briny air. Now the sun smiles upon the landscape, and earth smiles back again upon the sky. Frequent, now, are the travellers. Here, in a substantial family chaise, come a gentleman and his wife, with their rosy-cheeked little girl sitting gladsomely between them. The bottom of the chaise is heaped with multifarious band-boxes, and car- pet-bags, and beneath the axle swings a leathern trunk, dusty with yesterday’s journey. Next appears a four- wheeled carryall, peopled with a round half dozen of pretty girls, all drawn by a single horse, and driven by a single gentleman. Luckless wight, doomed through a whole summer’s day, to be the butt of mirth and mischief among the frolicsome maidens. Bolt upright in a sulky rides a thin, sour-visaged man, who, as he pays his toll, hands the toll-gatherer a printed card to stick upon the wall. The vinegar-faced traveller proves to be a manufacturer of pickles. Now paces slowly from timber to timber a horseman clad in black, with a meditative brow, as of one who, whithersoever his steed might bear him, would still journey through a mist of brooding thought. He is a country preacher, going to labor at a protracted meeting. The next object passing townward is a butcher’s cart, canopied with its arch of snow-white cotton. Behind comes a “sauceman,” driving a wagon full of new pota- toes, green ears of corn, beets, carrots, turnips, and sum- mer squashes; and next, two wrinkled, withered, witch- looking old gossips, in an antediluvian chaise, drawn by a horse of former generations, and going to peddle out a 105 106 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY lot of huckleberries. See there, a man trundling a wheel- barrow load of lobsters. And now a milk cart rattles briskly onward, covered with green canvas, and convey- ing the contributions of a whole herd of cows in large tin canisters. Now comes the noontide hour—of all the hours nearest akin to midnight; for each has its own calmness and re- pose. Soon, however, the world begins to turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest epoch of the day; when an accident impedes the march of sublunary things. The draw being lifted to permit the passage of a schooner, laden with wood from the eastern forests, she sticks im- movably, right athward the bridge! Meanwhile, on both sides of the chasm, a throng of impatient travellers fret and fume. Here are two sailors in a gig, with the top thrown back, both puffing cigars, and swearing all sorts of forecastle oaths. Here is a tin pedlar, whose glitter- ing ware bedazzles all beholders, like a travelling meteor or opposition sun. Here comes a party of ladies on horse- back, in green riding habits, and gentleman attendant; and there a flock of sheep for the market, pattering over the bridge with a multitudinous clatter of their little hoofs. On this side, heralded by a blast of clarions and bugles, appears a train of wagons, conveying all the wild beasts of a caravan; and on that, a company of summer soldiers, marching from village to village on a festival campaign, attended by the “Brass Band.” Now look at the scene, and it presents an emblem of the mysterious confusion, the apparently unsolvable riddle, in which indi- viduals, or the great world itself, seem often to be in- volved. What miracle shall set all things right again? But see! the schooner has thrust her bulky carcass through the chasm; the draw descends; horse and foot pass onward, and leave the bridge free from end to end. “And thus,” muses the toll-gatherer, “have I found it with all stoppages, even though the universe seemed to be at a stand.” The sage old man! It would seem that any one of us might have written, given the mood, and the courage, a narrative like this. The para- graphs are surely interesting as suggestive of days in boyhood and perhaps later years when Hawthorne must have watched like processions of people pass the toll-house on the draw- bridge connecting his native Salem with the town of Beverly on the north. This author seems especially fond of account- FORMS OF NARRATION 107 ing for all the moments of a transaction and realizing all its details consecutively. With the present sketch we might com- pare the better example of “David Swan,” in the same vol- ume. For an illustration more precisely temporal, we will add the following from Tolstdy’s Sebastopol (Wiener’s version) (XTIL):: When Mikhaylov saw the bomb, he dropped to the ground, and during the two seconds while the bomb lay unexploded, he, like Praskukhin, thought and felt in- finitely much. He prayed silently to God, and kept re- peating, “Thy will be done! Why did I enter into mili- tary service?’ Then he thought: “There I have gone over to the infantry, in order to take part in the cam- paign. Should I not have done better if I had stayed with the regiment of Uhlans in the city, and spent my time with my friend Natasha? And this is what I have instead !”’ And he began to count, “One, two, three, four,” imagining that if the bomb burst at an even number, he would live, but if at an uneven number, he would be killed. Everything is ended, I am killed,’ he thought, when the bomb exploded—he forgot to note whether it went off on an even or an uneven number—and he felt a blow and a severe pain in his head. “O God, forgive my sins,” he cried, swinging his arms. Then he got up, then fell down unconscious on his back. We may reasonably call this manner Consecutive or De- tailed Narration. It supplies as completely as possible all constituent elements or movements, and in their actual order. But, aside from dealing with tense moments, and situations in which each instant is as important as any other, the mind of the narrator will work selectively. There will be a succession of somewhat isolated acts or steps, which the imagination of the reader may be expected to piece together. Literature, speaking generally, cannot be more fully vitascopic in narra- tion than photographic in description. A writer, like a painter of portraits, must often overshadow or leave out such elements as would militate against the essential purport of his work. We have observed already that narration is in a sense pro- gressive description. It will use the vitagraph less often than the stereopticon. Fundamentally, it must furnish a series of 108 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY descriptive views, and so select and co-ordinate that each shall spread its visual effect over omitted parts. The following, from the story, by a wireless operator of the Titanic, of his rescue, will illustrate this snapshot manner of narration: I felt, after a little while, like sinking. I was very cold. I saw a boat of some kind near me and put all my strength into an effort to swim to it. I was all done when a hand reached out from the boat and pulled me aboard. There was just room for me to roll on the edge, I lay there, not caring what happened. Somebody sat on my legs. They were wedged in between slats and were being wrenched. I had not the heart to ask the man to move. It was a terrible sight all around—men swimming and sinking. I lay where I was, letting the man wrench my feet out of shape. Others came near. Nobody gave them a hand. The bottom-up boat already had more men than it would hold and it was sinking. At first the larger waves splashed over my clothing. They then began to splash over my head, and I had to breathe when I could. As we floated around on our capsized boat, and I kept straining my eyes for a ship’s light, somebody said, “Don’t the rest of you think we ought to pray?” The man who made the suggestion asked what the religion of the others was. Each man called out his religion. One was a Catho- lic, one a Methodist, one a Presbyterian. It was decided the most appropriate prayer for all was the Lord’s Prayer. We spoke it over in chorus with the man who first suggested that we pray as the leader. Some splendid people saved us. They had a right- side-up boat, and it was full to its capacity. Yet they came to us and loaded us all into it. I saw some lights off in the distance and knew that a steamer was coming to our aid, I didn’t care what happened. I just lay and gasped when I could and felt the pain in my feet. At last the Carpathia was alongside, and the people were being taken up a rope ladder. Our boat drew near and one by one the men were taken off of it. I tried the rope ladder. My feet pained terribly, but I got to the top and felt hands reaching out to me. The next I knew a woman was leaning over me in a cabin, and I felt her hand waving back my hair and rubbing my face. FORMS OF NARRATION 109 I felt somebody at my feet. Somebody got me under the arms. Then I was hustled down below to the hos- pital. That was early in the day, I guess. I lay in the hospital until near night, and they told me the Carpathia’s wireless man was getting “queer,” and would I help. After that I was never out of the wireless room, so I don’t know what happened among the passengers. I just worked wireless. The splutter never died down. I knew it soothed the hurt and felt like a tie to the world of friends and home.—New York Times, of April 28, 1912. This part of the wireless operator’s story covers the time, approximately, from 1 A.M. Monday morning (April 15, 1912) till the afternoon of the following Thursday, when the Car- pathia steamed into New York harbor. The difference be- tween the form of narration here used and the preceding Con- secutive or Detailed manner, is not difficult to characterize. The units now are not serial occurrences as such, but happen- ings that stand out in the memory of the narrator. Only a few experiences from that awful night are told, but we do not need or wish to have them multiplied. The momentum of imaginative realization carries the effect, with these sporadic parts, of a rounded and satisfying whole. The paragraphs also have taken shape under control from the same spirit of compression. From lack of a better designation, we may call this manner of narration, Selective or Suppressive. The thrilling experiences of aviators and shock troops who have gone “over the top” have furnished innumerable illustrations of this succinct and stimulating mode. EXERCISES 1. In such narration as you chance to overhear, note illustra- tions of the Summarizing form, and report in writing examples, as nearly as possible, in the language and manner of the moment. 2. Find, in some magazine short story or other fiction, a good specimen of the same mode of narration, and show the propriety of its use. 3. Recall some oral report of your own in which the Elemen- tary form of narration was used, and reproduce, as nearly as you can, the sentences employed. Recast and improve, making as good an illustration of this mode as possible. 110 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY 4. Find, in current or other literature, an extended example of Elementary narration. 5. From some one of your text books of history, report and discuss two examples of the Summarizing manner. 6. Describe, by concepts of form, the Buddhist structure called tope, as shown under this entry in the New International Dic- tionary. 7. Show, by concepts of movement, the action of an oarsman using the appointments of a racing shell. 8. Find incidents in some book of adventure, as the Swiss Fam- ily Robinson, that are treated in details that might well have been condensed according to the Summarizing form, and recast suc- cinctly. g. Find or recall an example of Summarizing narration that seems to you worthy of being told in the Consecutive manner, and give reasons for your criticism. 10. Describe, from cut in the Standard Dictionary, the form of a zarf. 11. From some novel or short story of standard quality quote an example of narration that seems to be cast, after the Selective manner, in a series of visual situations. 12, Recall some transaction or happening that appears to shape itself in memory, according to the Selective form, in an array of vivid pictures. 13. Examine the columns of telegraphic news in the morning paper, and report the forms of narration used. 14. Open at the beginning of some chapter in Macaulay’s His- tory of England, and write an appreciation, in respect to kind and quality, of the narration and description that you find. 15. Compare, from reports by survivors of experiences under- gone in the Great War, examples of the four forms of narration considered in this chapter. CHAPTER XII FORMS OF NARRATION (CONTINUED) ERE we to inspect comparatively the examples consid- ered in the last chapter, we should discover that they are severally related, after the manner of parts to a whole, to some larger unit or purpose of narration. The passage from Bjornson tells of something that was wit- nessed after a Norwegian wedding. The extract from Dick- ens gives certain observations of Pip concerning a dinner served in the rooms of his guardian. The first quotation in the chapter sums up attempts at economy in an English house- hold. The paragraph from Tolstoy details the experiences of an officer in the field who waits for the explosion of a bomb. “The Toll-Gatherer’s Day” assists Hawthorne’s fancy of a miracle by which “life could be made to roll its variegated length” before the eyes of one privileged to watch it without being carried along with it. The last citation is taken from the testimony of a survivor concerning the sinking of the Titanic. Each iljustration is a part that waits upon some other part or parts to make its significance complete. There are thus larger or higher aspects of our subject that must be considered. The prime object of narration is to pre- sent an event, or some unitary episode of an event, for its own sake, or, to speak more simply, to tell a story. A story, as we have known from childhood, is a rounded narrative,—one which starts, with some promise of interest, at an organic point, and ends in a way that justifies the telling and crowns the whole with a logical and releasing outcome. The drama and the novel are developed and established forms of story- telling, having typically in each instance a determinate middle, as well as a beginning, and an end. The mode called history is a more extended and formal species of narration, and pre- serves the original idea and spelling of “story” almost unal- tered. A biography is history restricted to the life or career 111 112 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY of a single person. History and biography, together with the novel and the drama, are literary and standardized species of narration, and tend severally to formalize the beginning and the end of the narrative in hand. Literature in recent years has appropriated the simplest form as well as manner of narration in the variety known as the Short Story. This, which is often a condensation of the novel proper, retains the strongly marked and artistic ending of its original, but in general shows no hint of a “‘middle” or central point of construction, or of a formal opening. A still more attenuated form of narration is the Episode, which is a separable and sometimes an integral portion of a history or biography or other extended narrative. The following, from one of Flaubert’s chapters (XIII), in Salammbo, on the siege of Carthage, is a good example: Since the ladders proved insufficient, the enemy brought forward the Tellenones,—instruments composed of one long beam attached transversely to another, this second beam supporting at the end a square basket, in which cabs foot-soldiers could be held and protected. from elow. Men bent to the task of turning a small wheel. The great beam was lifted, became horizontal, then rose to an almost vertical position, where, being weighed down too heavily at the end, it swayed like an immense reed. The soldiers, concealed to their chins, crowded together; only the plumes waving above their heads could be seen. At length, when the basket had been lifted fifty cubits, it swung from right to left several times, then descended; and like the arm of a giant holding on its hand a cohort of pygmies, it set down on the edge of the wall the basket filled with men. These leaped out upon the crowd of de- fenders, but did not reappear. It will be noted that this episode is provided, in accounting for itself, with a proper beginning, closes ideally, and cannot be said to lack the typical middle, by Aristotle’s scheme, of dramatic construction. We note also that here concepts of movement, as well as incongruent elements and sense appeals, appear again. Most of the story telling in the world has to do with the conduct of people, that is, with the operation of FORMS OF NARRATION 113 personal and social forces rather than with the forces of na- ture. Narration will in general take the form of showing what actions are performed, or what results from such actions,— how some one behaves, or what comes from the behavior, or more generally still, how a cause works, or what the cause accomplishes. The mind of the narrator inclines to the one or the other point of view, and is not apt to cross the han- dling. We reach here a distinction of treatment and mental atti- tude which corresponds to the Romantic and the Realistic man- ner (pp. 88, 89) of Description. In illustration of Romantic narration, we will compare a further and more extended epi- sode, from Victor Hugo’s observations (Les Miserables I, Book i. vii, ix) on the battle of Waterloo: The Emperor drew himself up and deliberated. Wellington had retreated. Nothing remained but to complete this retreat by an overthrow. Napoleon hurriedly turned and dispatched a courier at full speed to Paris, to announce that the battle was won. Napoleon was one of those geniuses with whom thunder originates. He had just found his thunderbolt. He gave Milhaud’s cuirassiers orders to take the pla- teau of Mont-Saint-Jean. All this cavalry, with sabres raised, standards flying, trumpets sounding, and formed in columns by divisions, descended with one movement and as one man, with the precision of a bronze battering ram opening a breach, the hill of La Belle Alliance, entered the dreadful valley in which so many men had already fallen, disappeared in the smoke, then, emerging from this darkness, reappeared on the other side, still in close formation, mounting at a full trot against a curtain of grape shot, the frightfully muddy slope of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean. They ascended it, grave, threatening, imperturbable. In the intervals between the discharges of musketry and artil- lery, their colossal tramp was heard. Advancing in two divisions, they formed two columns. Wathier’s division was on the right, Delord’s on the left. It seemed as if two immense steel snakes were crawling towards the crest of the plateau. They moved across the scene of bat- tle like a prodigy, a portent. Nothing like this spectacle had been seen since the capture of the great redoubt of the Muskowa by the heavy 114 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY cavalry. It seemed as if this mass of horses and men had become a monster, and was actuated by but a single soul. Each squadron undulated and swelled like the rings of a polypus. They were descried across a vast cloud of smoke rent here and there asunder. A confused commingling of helmets, yells, sabres, a stormy leaping of horses among cannon and blaring trumpets,—a tumult ordered but ter- rible; and above all, the cuirasses flashing like the scales of the dragon. No such narrative as this seems to belong to the present age. Something like the present spectacle was doubtless told of in the old Orphic epics celebrating the deeds of the centaurs, those ancient hippanthropot,—those Titans with the face of a man and the chest of a horse, who scaled Olympus at a gallop,—horrible, invulnerable, sublime; gods and brutes blended in one nature. This is clearly an example of the Consecutive or Detailed manner. It no less clearly shows the behavior of causal forces, like the brandishing of a weapon about to smite its victim, and it is told in a romantic vein. Romanticism will often consist as much in the enthusiasm of a writer as in the inspiriting na- ture of his theme. The most epical of subjects may be treated in an impersonal way, while realistic concerns may be dealt with in a romantic spirit. Some minds are subjective in their every attitude and act. Whatever has their interest is invested with values not inherent in the things themselves, but sup- plied from the transfigurations wrought by their own fancy. On the other hand, there are minds so poised and sage as to be incapable of extravagance or even fervency. They seem to foreknow and discount all the experiences that the future holds. To such, life is full of artistic significance in even its humblest aspects, and needs no amending touch. The examples of the preceding chapter peculiarly illustrate the realistic theory and manner of authorship in narration. A cause is often hard to come by and formulate, while its effects are generally palpable and easy to detail. So the treat- ment of causal phenomena in nature is apt to be romantic and subjective, while the exhibition of their effects, objective and realistic. The moving picture cannot deal with the theory of earthquakes, or show how the strains, the wrench have been gathering head, against the fatal day, for generations. The FORMS OF NARRATION 115 tornado is “happening” not less when it shrieks and hurtles through the air unseen than when it dips to earth and obliter- ates what it touches. The avalanche also is happening when it has but begun its awful sweep towards the village in the valley which it will overwhelm. The mind will often prefer to contemplate causative aspects of action, though vague and scant, rather than to present or discuss matter-of-fact particulars of an escape or tragedy. By piecing together causal manifesta- tions, it is often possible to make imagination conceive the vast- ness or violence of mentioned forces more adequately than by an inventory of their effects. Kuipling’s paragraph in Plain Tales (“False Dawn”) recounting terrifying features of the storm is a fair example of what romantic and causal narration may attempt. But each one of us has perhaps personally undergone more extraordinary experiences of this kind in dreams than can be instanced anywhere from books. The apparent sensation of falling, falling, falling through endless space, and what seems an eternity of duration, with the foregone certitude of dashing into an abyss that is never reached, involves an agony of expec- tation hardly to be matched from reality. Or we, it may be, seem moving about on our wonted rounds when a cloud of thick, rising heat assails us. The air burns, the ground on which we tread is like a pavement of red-hot ploughshares. We think of the sea, which is not distant. We flee to the shore, and force entry upon a ship. But presently the ocean begins to boil far and near, the air is saturated with steam which scalds our lungs and parboils our flesh. Out on the land we can see the internal fires burst out and envelop all the landscape in sheets of flame. Overhead the moon, for the scene seems changed now to night, has turned the color of an egg-yolk, the stars shine red and fiery, and seem to mock us in our desperation. Escape is indeed impossible. We face an unspeakable dissolu- tion—when we wake suddenly out of our nightmare of horrors “and find it all has been nothing but a dream.” - Of course the example from Kipling is not without sugges- tion of definite and enduring results from the cause considered. But in this case, the effect dreaded and expected is not the dread or expectation in itself, but the physical destruction that 116 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY did not come. Nor is it the writer’s purpose to tell the story of an escape, but to present to imagination the sublime menace of a hurricane in the tropics. The feelings experienced by the company are incidental merely. We note that the author has run through almost the whole gamut of visual resources, in his attempt to signify the phenomena and violence of the storm. Correspondent to Description in (p. 88) the Realistic vein, is Realistic narration. We may well illustrate this coun- terpart of the romantic manner first by an exhibit of effects from such forces of nature as have just been brought home to us. These forces, though portentous in extreme degree, caused no casualties or devastation. In the new example, effects are in awful evidence, while the forces producing them are unsus- pected till the moment of calamity, and unseen in operation. The illustration following is taken from the report, by an Eng- lish merchant, of the earthquake at Lisbon in 1755: In the midst of our devotions the second great shock © came on, little less violent than the first, and completed the ruin of those buildings which had been already much shat- tered. The consternation now became so universal, that the shrieks and cries of Misericordia could be distinctly heard from the top of St. Catherine’s Hill, at a consider- able distance off, whither a vast number of people had likewise retreated;vat the same time we could hear the fall of the parish church there, whereby many persons were killed on the spot, and others mortally wounded. You may judge of the force of this shock, when I in- form you it was so violent that I could scarce keep on my knees, but it was attended with some circumstances still more dreadful than the former. On a sudden I heard a general outcry, “The sea is coming in, we shall all be lost.” Upon this}’turning my eyes towards the river, which in that place is near four miles broad, I could perceive it heaving and swelling in a most unaccountable manner, as no wind was stirring. In an instant there appeared, at some small distance, a large body of water, rising as it were like a mountain. It came on foaming and roaring and rushed towards the shore with such im- petuosity that we all immediately ran for our lives as fast as possible; many were actually swept away, and the rest were left standing above their waists in water at a good distance from the banks. For my own part, I had the FORMS OF NARRATION 117 narrowest escape, and should certainly have been lost, had I not grasped a large beam that lay on the ground, till the water returned to its channel, which it did almost at the same instant, with equal rapidity. As there now appeared at least as much danger from the sea as the land, and I scarce knew whither to retire for shelter, I took a sudden resolution of returning back, with my clothes all dripping, to the area of St. Paul’s. Here I stood some time, and ob- served the ships tumbling and tossing about as in a violent storm; some had broken their cables and were carried to the other side of the Tagus; others were whirled round with incredible swiftness; several large boats were turned keel upwards; and all this without any wind, which seemed the more astonishing. It was at the time of which I am now speaking, that the fine new quay, built entirely of rough marble, at an immense expense, was entirely swallowed up, with all the people on it, who had fled thither for safety, and had reason to think themselves out of danger in such a place: at the same time a great num- ber of boats and small vessels, anchored near it, all like- wise full of people, who had retired thither for the same purpose, were all swallowed up, as in a whirlpool, and never more appeared. Here the mental attitude is in marked contrast with the one that governs in the paragraph from Kipling. It is now full and honest horror, awe, dismay. In the former instance, Kip- ling speaks as half in apathy, half in irony at the bravado of the storm. Here the appalled and broken spirit of the writer lays no claim to distinction for the escape, or for the part he played. The eighteenth-century dignity of his story stands in strong relief against the unconscious manner of the wireless operator, and of like modern narratives of greater power.? The office of style is to assist, not delay or obstruct, an au- thor’s purpose of communication. The effect of realistic treatment may be greatly enhanced when the subject is of a kind adapted to foster indignation or partiality in the writer, but is not permitted to inspire it. Sil- vio Pellico’s My Prisons is a recognized masterpiece of im- passive, almost impersonal narration. In the following epi- sode (V. 112), this author tells how Maroncelli, his prison 1 See especially the letter, published in McClure’s for May, 1909, by a survivor of the earthquake at Messina. 118 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY mate, suffered consequences from their long confinement in Spielburg dungeons: The helpless man was borne into a larger room. He made the request that I should follow him. “I might not survive,” he said, “the operation. In that case, I should at least rest in the arms of my friend.” He secured the concession that I should be with him. The Abbott Werba, our confessor, came to administer the sacrament to the unfortunate man. This religious act performed, we settled down to wait for the surgeons, who though expected had not arrived. Maroncelli began to sing a hymn. The surgeons at last came in. There were two, one of them the stated resident of the place, namely our barber. He had the right, in case operations were called for, to perform them without assistance, and he had in general showed no willingness to yield up the honor to another. The second surgeon was a young student from the college at Vienna, and already reputed possessor of considerable skill. Though commissioned by the governor to assist in the operation and direct it, he would have been pleased to perform it himself, but contented himself with watching the work of his companion. Maroncelli did not utter a sound. When he saw the amputated leg borne away, he gave it a look of pity, then, turning to the operating surgeon, said: “You have freed me from an enemy, and I have no means of repay- ment.” There was in a vase upon the window sill a rose. “T pray you,” said Maroncelli, “bring to me that rose.” I carried it to him. And he offered it to the gray-haired surgeon, saying to him, “I have nothing else to give you in token of my gratitude.” The old man took the rose, and burst into tears. This was in 1828. Anesthetics did not come into use in surgery till some twenty years after the incident here related. Many readers have expressed impatience because no spirit of rancor or recalcitration against a method of imprisonment that breeds gangrene in the limbs of victims breathes through the work. They fail to appreciate that the author employs this manner genuinely and forgivingly, and that “it was this sim- ple story of fortitude and resignation that made Europe shud- der and Austria tremble and finally procured the deliverance FORMS OF NARRATION 119 of Italy.” The restraint and repose of My Prisons seem cop- ied from the supreme realism of the gospels, in which the re- spective authors fear to mar their my by the least sign of advocacy or apology. A further manner of narration, ids not the least important, should be included in the present comparison of forms. It deals with problems more complex than any hitherto consid- ered in these chapters. It is well illustrated in the following paragraphs, in which Dickens (Pictures from Italy: Rome) attempts to present the closing revels of the Carnival season, in that city, for the benefit of his untravelled English readers: As the bright hangings and dresses are all fading into one dull, heavy, uniform color in the decline of the day, -lights begin flashing, here and there: in the windows, on the house-tops, in the balconies, in the carriages, in the hands of the foot-passengers}; little by little: gradually: gradually: more and more: until the whole long street is one great glare and blaze of fire. Then, everybody ~pres- ent has but one engrossing object; that is, to extinguish other people’s candles, and to keep his own alight; and everybody, man, woman or child, gentleman or lady, prince or peasant, native or foreigner; yells and screams, and roars incessantly, as a taunt to the subdued, “Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccolo!” (“Without a light! Without a light!”) until nothing is heard but a gigantic» chorus of those two words, mingled with peals of laughter. The spectacle, at this time, is one of the most extraor- dinary that can be imagined. Carriages coming slowly by, with everybody standing on the seats or on the box, hold- ing up their lights at arms’ length, for greater safety; some in paper shades; some with a bunch of undefended _ little tapers, kindled altogether} some with blazing torches ;' some with feeble little candles; men on foot, creeping along, among the wheels,’ watching their opportunity, to make a spring at some particular light, and dash it out; other people climbing up into carriages, to get hold of them by main force;*others, chasing some unlucky wan- derer, round and round his own coach, to blow out the light he has begged or stolen somewhere, before he can ascend to his own company, and enable them to light their extinguished tapers; others, with their hats off, at a car- riage door,’ humbly beseeching some kind-hearted lady to oblige them with a light for a cigar, and when she is in the fulness of doubt whether to comply or no, blowing out 120 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY the candle she is guarding so tenderly with her little hand; other people at the windows, fishing for candles with lines and hooks,’ or letting down long willow-wands with hand- kerchiefs at the end,’ and flapping them out, dexterously, when the bearer is at the height of his triumph; others, biding their time in corners; with immense extinguishers like halberds, and suddenly coming down upon glorious torches, ‘others, gathered round one coach, and sticking to it; others, raining oranges and nosegays at an obdurate little lantern, or regularly storming a pyramid of men, holding up one man among them, who Carries one feeble little wick above his head, with which he defies them all! Senza Moccolo! Senza’ Moccolo! Beautiful women, standing up in coaches, pointing in derision at extin- guished lights, and clapping their hands, as they pass on, crying, “Senza Moccolo! Senza Moccolo!”; low bal- conies’ full of lovely faces and gay dresses, struggling with assailants in the streets; some repressing them as they climb up, some bending down, some leaning over, some shrinking back—delicate arms and bosoms—graceful fig- ures—glowing lights, fluttering dresses, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moc-co-lo-o-o-o!—when in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, and the Carnival is over in an instant—put out like a taper, with a breath! Here evidently is a species of narration that permits no progress and expects no goal. The treatment can deal with nothing but shifting aspects of a complex and impracticable whole. The manner of handling is analogous to the method of the kodak amateur, who goes about in a vast kaleidoscopic scene, making snapshots at random of this and that surprising feature. For lack of a better designation, one might call this form Descriptive Narration. It is narration because the view at every point shifts from moment to moment. It is descrip- tive because there is no attempt to show the behavior of even a single person, or unit of observation, in a true series of move- ments or changes. It aims merely to present certain isolated and momentary phases of activity, such as one might select to sketch or paint. In this illustration we may again distinguish the effect man- ner from the causal manner of narration. The writer is here attempting to detail certain acts or pranks prompted by the FORMS OF NARRATION 121 spirit of revelry. This disposition to celebrate extravagantly is not caused by a return of the Carnival season or its closing night, but has existed in the minds of the Roman populace for generations. Like manifestations under certain conditions ap- pear in all cities and communities, because sport and hilarity are inherent in human nature. The arrival of the season and the day merely furnishes the occasion for an outbreak. Here the ringing of the Ave alters conditions and withdraws war- rant for merry-making. A cause should be distinguished sharply from the occasion that permits its exercise. A spark dropped on a train of gunpowder is not the cause of the ex- plosion following, but its occasion. The cause exists unre- leased beforehand in the nature of the explosive. Fundamentally, the realist takes himself and other things, not as he fain would have them, but as he finds them. The romanticist takes himself and other things, not as he suspects they are, but as he would most enjoy having them become. Realism as a body of written products may be thought of as the literature of being rather than of doing, of the soul and life and nature in static states. Similarly, romanticism in books may be looked upon as the literature of the soul as will, of compelling might in man or nature, of life sublimated, etherealized, perfected. Weare apt to be romanticists in youth, when we seem to sit in seats of power, and success is sure. We are realists in later years, after we have suffered defeats and learned how far dreams come true. Many of us, indeed, are romanticists of mornings, when we lay plans for the day. We turn realists at nightfall, when we have found out how far it is possible to actualize our ideals, our aims, our hopes. We have perhaps noted that the manner of narration may change from paragraph to paragraph, according as the quality or intensity of incidents presented changes. The first part of a history, if it sum up antecedent events or periods, will prob- ably be cast in the Summarizing form. Its more vital chap- ters will be told in the Consecutive or the Selective mode, while its battles will be likely to take on the character of De- Scriptive narration. The epic or narrative poem, being in gen- eral more laconic and condensed than prose, should show such shifts of manner with great plainness. Lancelot and Elaine, 122 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY for example, opens with a paragraph in the Elementary or sensational form, with the manifest purpose of engaging the reader’s imagination for the story. This is accomplished by the preposterous expedient of making the second title charac- ter stand guard over the shield of Lancelot, and contrive to be wakened by light reflected from it, at sunrise, upon her face: Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable, Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat, High in her chamber up a tower to the east, Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot; Which first she placed where morning’s earliest ray Might strike it and awake her with its gleam. The three stanzas following this are cast in the Summariz- ing form. After parts of the poem illustrate variously all the other modes. It seems evident, as we look back over the Forms of Narra- tion illustrated in these chapters, that the divisions recognized are in part determined in each case by the mood and purpose of the writer, and in part by the nature of the happenings with which he deals. It would seem that authors are mainly con- trolled by instinct in suiting Forms to the respective materials and the state of mind. Equally evident is it that the impulse of selection here, as in other arts, may be disciplined and en- lightened, and eventually governed, with large profit to the product. Other modes and forms of narration will doubtless come to the notice of the learner, in his study of literature and of his own work, and may well be discussed and formu- lated in special inquiries under the present head. EXERCISES 1. Recall the details of some journey, lately finished, and sketch out divisions that should fall under different forms of narration. Choose out some exciting episode, and treat appropriately after the Romantic manner. 2. Write, with careful attention to details, the paragraph or portion which you have purposed to present in the Realistic man- ner of narration. 3. Compose now the part that you have judged should be dis- patched by use of the Summarizing form. FORMS OF NARRATION 123 4. Supply next that division of the whole which it was de- cided should be cast in Consecutive or Detailed narration. 5. Write the paragraphs that seem to call for the Elementary or Sensational manner. 6. Compose the part designed for the Selective form. 7. Paste together the divisions now completed, in their proper order in the narrative, read the whole aloud, and annotate with corrections and improvements. 8. Putting this study aside, plan another similarly, and work out the whole connectedly, if possible at a single sitting, after the eventual manner in which you would expect to write. 9. In Two Years before the Mast, or some similar example of extended narration, quote and discuss as many illustrations of the several modes as you can find. 10. Recall some scene or experience proper for presentation by Descriptive narration, and select the parts or phases that might be used. 11. In recent numbers of the standard magazines, find good in- stances of the Realistic, the Detailed, and the Selective manner. 12. Describe the cowfish. 13. Read Poe’s Descent into the Maelstrom, and discuss the forms and the visual effectiveness of the narration. 14. Review in mind the narrative books you have read recently, and, selecting one, report from it any manner of narration that might be regarded as a distinct and further form. 15. Read over the study prepared as Exercise 8, annotate and rewrite, making the whole as visual and natural as you can. CHAPTER TAIT LITERARY TECHNIC IN DESCRIPTION AND NARRATION EFORE we leave the subjects of narration and descrip- tion, certain further aspects of both should be considered. These aspects are in no sense vital, yet often greatly assist in establishing higher values for the products of literary art. It is possible to show the inner truth of an object more satis- fyingly than the object itself shows it. This is oftenest done by bringing in another something that shows the given truth more nakedly. Thus the successful portrait of a face discloses personality as the original cannot disclose it except to the art- ist’s eye. We have seen how description selects and adjusts outer parts so that the reader may construct and enjoy the in- trinsic whole. Neither the master of description nor the painter works with the hope or purpose of showing an object accurately or completely, but only for the sake of the spiritual presentation that can be made of it. Both appeal to us with lines and colors, or words representing them, while we sup- ply the spiritual effect from within ourselves by imagination. It is the province of art, speaking generally, to make unin- teresting things interesting, as well as interesting things more interesting. We have seen something of how the master of narration and description works, following the artist, in his larger tasks. In these, the personal manner of either, when it is peculiarly satisfying, is called his technic. But both artist and author may have pointed or daring ways of doing inci- dental and minor things, and by these occasion more than minor satisfaction to the observer. It is in touches of this kind that we find often the most pronounced marks of indi- viduality as well as the most distinguished proofs of. skill. So an author’s as an artist’s technic may be conveniently studied in his power of making incidental things seem better, by the telling, than the things can possibly seem seen in themselves. In literature, the means are the same, figures, 124 LITERARY TECHNIC 125 as have been treated. But they are often more delicate, al- ways more realistic and intense. The impulse is now not so much to present form or movement as such, in kind, as to communicate the exquisite spiritual truthfulness of form or movement in degree. In this remarkable illustration, Kipling speaks (The Man Who Would Be King, p. 197) of a dash of rain near the end of the dry season in the tropics: ; It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of al- most boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that it was only a pretence. Here the suggestiveness climaxes in the first clause of the last sentence. The massed suddenness of descent, the flat spill- ing of the patch, the “spot” of rain on the hot dust, are so astonishingly comprised, as to bulk and manner, in the “flop” of the frog, that we are carried over by this identity into the experience of the moment, and seem to appropriate the au- thor’s discovery of it as our own. It is Kipling, of course, who, by his penetration, has gratified certain of our finer | senses, yet we feel that we have touched the plane of spiritual mastery with him. This passage from Tennyson furnishes a nobler example: ... high above I heard them blast The steep slate quarry, and the great echo flap And buffet round the hills from bluff to bluff. What is told here is a merest incident, yet inspires perhaps more delight than the main part of the story. Those of us who have heard the detonations from rock-blasting among mountains cannot forget the unimaginable sweep and crash of the eehoes among the crags. They seem but vague, incom- prehensible wonders, until Tennyson presents them as in es- sence the wing-strokes of an enormous bird. The different forms of narration may be thus embellished here and there by the illumination that exquisite type appeals 126 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY lend to the commonplace. Large happenings presented by large expedients may arouse our sense of the sublime to ro- mantic exercise. But the realistic touch, making lucid and living the simplest idyllic turn in act or scene, delights us by cumulation hardly less. We can thread our way contentedly through dull pages of fiction or travel by the lure of interpre- tative concepts such as the following, illustrating the narra- tive technic of various authors: She slipped like water to the floor. The burning tree-tops waved like torches in the air. The wave had slouched outside with a plop and a chuckle. “Pooh,” said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the water. He hinged his hat upon his forehead to the lady through the full sweep of a semicircle. He blew rings of smoke, which sped horizontally, like phantom hoops, hurtling through the room. From the edge of earth and sky, ray after ray of violet- white fire made a swift stab at the stars. The flames, leaping suddenly by the opening below, were licking the walls, climbing towards him, about to en- circle him. And all that while the little Dimbula pitched and chopped, and swung and slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die, and got up as though she had been stung. When the locomotive moved out of the station, fishing rods were sticking out of every window of the train, which looked like a huge spiked caterpillar worming itself through the fields. The direct way to Fuller Place lay up the South Road,—a broad thoroughfare, through the center of which there used to trickle occasionally a tiny horse-drawn ve- hicle to and from the great city of B——. Down the lane they went, and dark enough it was. Mr. Pickwick brought out the lantern, once or twice, as they LITERARY TECHNIC 127 groped their way along, and threw a very bright tunnel of light before them, about a foot in diameter. The horses must have been Spanish jennies, sired by the gale, for they went as fast as the wind; and the moon, which had risen to light us at our departure, rolled in the heavens like a wheel detached from its car. We saw it springing on our right from tree to tree, trying to keep up with us. Though the last example is impressionistic and fanciful, the concepts of movement are not incorrect. We have often in childhood and since, while riding along an avenue flanked by trees, seen the moon pursue us. If some one had asked us what its apparent behavior made us think of, we should un- doubtedly have said, A detached wheel rolling along the sky. As we have turned some sharp curve in our course, we have been more than half persuaded that the moon was indeed “springing’’ from tree to tree, with purpose not to be distanced by our speed. Numerous illustrations of descriptive technic might be intro- duced to similar effect. A few striking instances will suffice: The ends of the joists stuck out of the wall like decay- ing tooth-stumps.—Nexo: Pelle, Vol. IV, p. 4. Between the walls of a garden, with a tall and twisted trunk, a gigantic palm tree raised its head—like a spider fastened to the sky.—Pio Barojo: City of the Discreet, Dawsts Here and there little rocky hills, the last offshoots of the Aravalis to the west, break the grounds; but the bulk of it is fair and without pimples.—Kipling: From Sea to Sea, Vol. I, p. 136. A high four-post bed with faded curtains, worked with fleur-de-lis by some dead and gone Dexter, whose handi- work was to be seen in many an embroidery throughout the Castle, jutted like a peninsula into the middle of the room.—Pryce: Jezebel, p. 175. The wild tulip, at end of its tube blows out great red bell Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell—Browning: Up at a Villa. 128 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, will be remembered in that place for its strange sun- set. It looked like the end of the world. All the heaven seemed covered with a quite vivid and palpable plumage; you could only say that the sky was full of feathers, and of feathers that almost brushed the face. Across the great part of the dome they were gray, with the strangest tints of violet and mauve and an unnatural pink or pale green; but towards the west the whole grew past description, transparent and passionate, and the red-hot plumes of it covered up the sun like something too good to be seen, The whole was so close about the earth, as to express nothing but a violent secrecy. It expressed that splendid smallness which is the soul of local patriotism. The very sky seemed small—Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday, pp. 4, 5. We note here that clearness and takingness, in visual presen- tation, seem to approach each other. A visualizing action, as well as a visualizing pose, may or may not, according to the nature of vital elements, charm the reader. All the examples in this chapter, except the last, and in part the final illustra- tion of narrative technic, appear to have been inspired by the instinct of exact truthfulness, and not by the sense of beauty. The union of form concepts with concepts of motion will often greatly increase the visual effect. The vigor of this ex- ample, which might have been intensified by mention of the color, is due as much to shape as movement: He squeezed out a worm of paint on his palette. Chesterton successfully indicates the violence of the gale, treated at the opening of Manalive, by this union of motion and still life: The bright short grass lay all one way like -brushed hair. Every shrub in the garden tugged at its roots like a dog at the collar, and strained every leaping leaf after the hunting and exterminating element. The technic of modern literary diction is thus seen to be dependent largely upon acuteness and delicacy of perception. It is a something engendered in part of wit, and not less from LITERARY TECHNIC 129 sensitiveness of spirit. Born in French salons of the early nineteenth century, it has slowly imparted its character to the literature of France and of Europe, and hence to ours. Bril- liant conversationalists still influence makers of literature by the ease with which they uncover and turn to account the il- luminating parallel. Maupassant, we may say, lived and wrote to show us how to compass concepts of form, Ruskin and Tolstoy, concepts of action. These men have shown us excel- lencies by which writing of this age is judged, and by which our taste for narrative and descriptive writing must be formed. Type conceptions such as these writers use do not come al- ways by inspiration. Tennyson waited sometimes for years to get sight of a vivifying analogy. Tolstoy rewrote one of his volumes more than a hundred times. Kipling spends whole days in search of true type names and phrases. Ideals like theirs fix the standards for the literature of the day. It is also their mission to raise the popular sense of literary values as near as possible to the level of their work. EXERCISES 1. Examine and quote examples of narrative technic from the opening chapters of Howells’s Mrs. Farrell, and discuss. 2. Write an appreciation of the narrative and descriptive tech- nic, with examples, in Hewlett’s Spanish Jade. 3. Watch the figures and phrases ventured by clever conversa- tionalists, and report any that seem illustrative of values consid- ered in this chapter. 4. Quote significant examples from Willa Cather’s Professor’s House. 5. Compare the literary technic in the fiction of Katherine Mansfield and John Galsworthy. 6. Read Motley’s chapter (Rise of the Duich Republic IV. ii) on the siege of Leyden, and discuss the propriety and effectiveness of the narrative in different parts. 7. Judge whether the following passage is narrative chiefly, or descriptive, and supply the grounds for your conclusion. Try whether, from spirit and style and diction, you can identify the author, and volume quoted from. 130 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of ma- chinery and tall chimneys, out .of which interminable ser- pents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It con- tained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. 8. In contrast, examine for technic and manner The Research Magnificent, by H. G. Wells. Copy an array of locutions, and discuss their propriety and strength. CHAPTER XIV EXPOSITION | 6) Rue rcreanneaerD and Narration are important forms of communication, and, as we have seen, are also enjoy- able. But it is well to note that we do not describe or narrate for the sake merely of describing or narrating, nor should we or do we engage in either solely for the pleasure of it. Both are means by which we supply a sort of presence to others not with us when we see things that they also would have liked to witness, and are glad to hear about. They are glad to hear of the things we tell because they would otherwise have missed something that they think, or would have thought, worth while. But what makes things, in themselves, worth while to hear of or report? Objects and happenings, even when known of at first hand, are merely facts, and are not ultimately signifi- cant in themselves. “No fact is an adequate expression of its meaning asa fact.” It is at best only an illustration, an evince- ment of something beyond and greater than itself. The blaze that we watch in the grate is not merely a fact of flame, but also and even more an instance of the activity with which certain chemical elements seek a stronger union. The discov- ery of a new fact, like radium, is quickly merged in a new pro- cedure. We are at once prompted, by forces or instincts in our minds, to discount the fact as such, and set about inquir- ing what the fact stands for, or really is. So we describe and narrate, not so much for the purpose of communicating the looks or behavior of things, as of making our hearer or reader think as well as know. Fundamentally to think is to find out what a thing is by determining its class. More explicitly, to think is to answer some or all of the ques- tions, What? How? Why? Where? When? Whither? Acts or objects finally signify principles, laws, truths, which are greater than the facts illustrating them and which, their importance discovered, release the mind from further consideration of 131 132 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY them as facts solely. Newton, for instance, does not appear to have preserved the famous apple that brought to light the law of gravitation, or to have thought of it again. It is thus the principles, the inner values that make things we describe or narrate worth while to those who read or hear. The sort of discourse or communication that brings out the worth- whileness of what is seen or known is Exposition. There are kinds and degrees to be noted in this division of discourse. That which Newton used to unfold the law of gravitation is Scientific Exposition. The decision of a bench of judges, which brings to light an underlying principle of right or justice, is Legal Exposition. The form by which Aristotle and Bacon and Bergson set forth their doctrines is Philosophical Exposition. The means employed by a Wilson or a Coolidge to expound and justify national policy is Politi- cal Exposition. ‘The discussions by which Carlyle and Ar- nold and Emerson show what is worth while in life or books, is Literary Exposition, as understood by writers of handbooks on composition,—who indeed employ exposition to communi- cate the nature and value of exposition itself. Most of us first become acquainted consciously with exposi- tion through manuals of rhetoric and the requirement of “themes” in English studies. We probably have thought writ- ing of this kind difficult and unnatural. Perhaps not all of us have yet realized that tasks set for us in exposition are really of the sort which we engage in every day outside of school, and which we do not feel to be tasks at all. This unconscious and unrecognized exposition has been going on all about us and we have been sharing in it ever since we can remember. We perhaps recall how we first found ourselves as thinkers, when we compelled attention and respect in the family coun- cil over some question of household policy. Up to the age of ten or over, whenever we had ventured to speak to the ques- tion of the moment, we were silenced or ignored. But now in a discussion whether the plan of altering the house should be adhered to, or carpets should come back in place of rugs and polished floors, or the touring car be exchanged for a sedan, we suddenly find ourselves full of vision as to what were best to do. Whenever we are thus persuaded what should be a EXPOSITION 133 course of action, or more precisely, convinced of the principles that should govern in a given matter, we should find it easy to phrase our meaning. And, in all such cases of thinking and expressing thought, we are typically engaged in the supposedly dreadful business of exposition, in spite of its high-sounding, scholastic name. As in narration and description, our tribu- lations lie essentially in the difficulty of seeing the precise na- ture of the thing in hand, and not greatly in the saying of what we see. What we have thus been doing well impromptu and uncon- sciously with the voice, we should do better consciously and reflectively with the pen. We are to realize that literary ex- position, or essay writing, is an ad libitum attempt to bring out why given things are worth while, and that we cannot ex- pound why given things are worth while except by way of instances in which involved qualities have been or may be shown. Also, we must proceed concretely and visually, just as in former chapters. If a wise teacher has seen me dismayed at the thought of making an “essay,” and likely to spend days or weeks in trying to find a “subject,” he should say, “I am not going to have you write ‘essays,’ your kind of essays, at all. Now listen, Mr. Smith: What is your notion of a perfect gentleman?” I am not, let us suppose, aware that I have ever had a no- tion of what a perfect gentleman should be. But I am confi- dent at once, now that the question is asked, that I do have one. But I am far from knowing definitely what that notion is. lI hesitate, of course, and the teacher, who has not ex- pected or intended anything else, will say, “You find you have a notion, do you not?’ And TI assent. “You could have told me all right, if I had given you a chance to think?” As I assent again, he says, “Then find out what that idea of yours really is, write it out and let me have it in the morning. No matter how short your answer is, do not add a single word to make it longer. And, by the way, all the others in the class, for to-morrow’s exercise, may do the same thing.” So we all begin in every-day style to think out what quali- ties lie back of the word, what makes us want to call any man a gentleman. We naturally go back to gentlemanly things that 134 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY we have seen done, and of the persons who did them. One of us remembers seeing a well-groomed young man help a working woman loaded with bundles off a street car, and he names the quality. He thinks of a friend who was amused at an impudent newsboy, who tried to short-change him, and whom, rallied in kindliness and good fellowship, he left better motivated and better natured. The quality here noted is named and used. There is mention of a man seen to remove his hat in an insurance office where he is debating about some claim with a woman clerk not overcivil. There is brought in also a social figure who refused to listen, in a group at his club, to an item of gossip involving a common friend believed by himself to have been at fault. So this member of the class goes on recounting incidents that bring to light parts of his idea until he has signified in substance, both to his teacher and himself, what his conception of a gentleman, a finished gentleman, is. Outside of my own part in the case, I am beginning to be conscious that I carry about with me no end of other unreal- ized “notions” of like sort. I discover that I am continually appealing to them in my judgments of people, and that I am almost constantly developing them, much as I have just devel- oped my idea of a gentleman, to others and myself. I could no less readily have told, instead, and with no less confidence, what is my notion of an ideal lady, or friend, or doctor, or business man. Another effect of the work will be to blot out from the stu- dent’s landscape that no man’s land between books and life. The mystery of literature and of making literature seems to disappear. After a few weeks in the work, members of the class come up to the teacher and want to tell what has hap- pened. One and another will say, almost in unison, “I al- ways used to have the worst kind of a time trying to find something that I thought I could write about. Now, as I came from breakfast this morning, I thought of nine subjects that I want to write on just as soon as I can.” ‘This is not at all an imagined incident, nor indeed for that matter is any step or part of the illustration which this concludes. And yet another consummation may be looked for. The EXPOSITION 135 pupil should not, will not, longer write insincerely. He will not offer merely what he thinks his teacher wants. More than all, he will not write below his intellectual level. Were is an exercise of the kind that pupils interested in exposition will no longer consider satisfying, at least in content: Have we realized that there is scarcely a home in the whole country that has not its pet or pets? If there is not a dog or a cat, there will be found a rabbit, or a squirrel, or a peacock, or a guinea pig, or possibly a pony, or a goat. If there is no stable in which to care for such enlargements of the domestic circle, there will be caged indoors perhaps a parrot, or a mocking-bird, or a canary, or white mice. Sometimes one hears of a tame fox, or bear, or eagle. Tennyson’s Princess, we remember, kept two lame leopards by her desk, as she wrote or lectured. We read of trained cobras, and other snakes exalted to the plane of pets. What instincts are there to be gratified with such means as these? In men it is the wish to father something that will help make a home. The confirmed bachelor is likely to have a great Dane, or Saint Bernard, or perhaps a hunt- ing dog, as his companion. In women, there is a desire to mother something, to help the helpless, to humanize and fondle even the unworthy. With children, there is the passion, coupled with curiosity, to enlarge the circle of playfellows. Authors also have had childish enthusi- asms. Sir Walter Scott romped with his hounds, and Petrarch made sonnets while he rubbed the fur of his favorite cat. The impressment of pets, which we see in our own country, is going on similarly all over the world. The whole animal creation seems waiting to be brought into domestic dependency upon man. In every species some useful quality is in time disclosed. The dog exhibits un- failing devotion to the master who maltreats him. Yet the dog is but a domesticated wolf or jackal. The horse, at first a most unpromising animal, has developed mar- velous loyalty and serviceableness. Cattle, sheep, and goats have been bred from originals valueless except as game. The elephant, dreaded and wondered at for many generations, has found his place as the most sagacious and mighty of all the allies of man. Civilization could not have been accomplished without the aid of these servants of society. The whole category of savage creatures will one day be tamed similarly, or exterminated. 136 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY This production, patched together from the floating wisdom of the general mind, is of course no index of gifts or culture in the one who wrote it. Though unmistakably essay sub- stance, it is only parroted or spurious exposition. No pupil could read it in the hearing of his fellows, outside of the school room, and escape guying. No normal student acting normally will write and stand by what he feels is not credit- able to his intellectual pretensions. This “essay” reads like the work of some hired writer of high-school or freshman themes. There is practically little difference, in outside life, between an eleventh-grade intelligence and one of higher maturity, as to distinctions now in sight. High-school youths at fifteen have pretty much learned already, through a series of experiences, how to anticipate and suppress the feeble values that arise in thought. And even now, when a pupil finds in company that some idea thought worth while falls flat, he feels stultified and holds his peace till he is sure his next venture will com- mand respect. It is not less imperative that what he writes shall carry justifying sense than what he expresses orally, but more, much more. And, as we need not rehearse, justifying sense can be made to originate plentifully, in the student mind. But schools, some schools, are said not to require or look for justifying sense in themes, provided they are punctuated and paragraphed correctly. But right punctuating and para- graphing come from within, and are not, like embalming fluid, to be administered from without. They do not make dead thought live, or give any other sort of value to what is value- less. They had their origin in living speech, and solely to help written speech come closer to the spoken norm. We punctu- ate and paragraph when we talk, but we do not talk at ran- dom in order to practice ourselves in punctuating and para- graphing. We all know there would be harm in that. Just what is justifying sense we cannot stop here to discuss. The question will be considered in future pages. We may treat it here as a matter of common sense. Common sense as- sures us that we are not to play at thinking more than we play at remembering, or inferring, or believing, or aspiring. When we have reached the last years of the high school, we EXPOSITION 137 are not to cultivate make-believe moralizing after the manner of: sixth-grade pupils. When we have been admitted to col- lege, we are not to set ourselves problems in permutations and combinations, from .cyclopedias or other sources, with the thoughts of others. For an example of justifying sense in sec- ondary English, we might ask some enlightened eleventh-grade student to sketch out for us in brief his notion of what is worth while in pets, and worth while in having pets. We may fairly expect to have from him in response a paragraph or two of first-draft exposition not much different from the fol- lowing: Petting is good for petters, as well as pets. It enlarges the life and nature of the objects favored, and of the persons who do the petting. It tamed the rat in the dun- geon, and likewise cured the despair and saved the reason of the hoary prisoner, in the ancient tale. Kindliness and companionship seem sometimes to lift an animal nature to the human level. To be assured, one needs only to watch the behavior of blooded colts toward their trainer, who has pursued his task of winning their liking and confidence from the first day. In a few months they will run to him, on sight, and rub their heads against his shoulder. Through the intimacy he fosters, his pets become wholly loyal and trustworthy, until, like the horse in Browning’s How They Brought the Good News, they are willing, if put to the test, to stake their very lives. It is love of the pet name, and not dread of the spur, that brings them: through. There is an unfathomed capacity for increased! existence in plants and trees, along with animals, as Bur- bank and the orchardists have shown. We all feel the impulse to aid in this enlargement of life beneath us, which brings conscious enlargement of the life within. I seem to have read somewhere that every form of life is akin to every other. If that is true, “petting” is in one sense part of a world movement to ally all things living in a single family. Principles discerned from actual cases should be flanked as far as practicable with examples that embody them. Refer- ence here to the horse, which is of course the hero of Brown- ing’s poem, is the climax element in the whole discussion. There is always danger, if we begin to write abstractly, of 138 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY writing abstractly altogether, and of losing our reader’s interest and attention. The public of to-day is demanding a great deal more, in the English of magazines and books, than clearness and correctness of phrase. These, with precision, are nega- tive values, and do not in themselves make literature. Hence is it that publishers reject the majority of manuscripts sub- mitted, largely because of heavy diction, but especially from lack of that live and picturesque quality which communication in real life abounds in. Turgenev and Tolstoy, now accounted our highest models, with certain others of the last generation, have shown how to make exposition as attractive as fiction. De Amicis, the latest of these great names, ranks as by no means least in pictorial and carrying power. The following from his Cuore, one of the most remarkable books of the century, illustrates the general manner of the group: Yes, dear Enrico, study comes hard for you, as your Mother has remarked. But listen. Everybody, Enrico, everybody studies now. Think of the workmen who go to school evenings after working all day. Think of the women and the girls of the country who go to school on Sundays, when they have toiled all the week. Think of the soldiers who come in exhausted from drill, and yet take up their text-books and written exercises. Think of the blind children, and the deaf-mutes who, with all their handicaps, are studying. Think too of the men in prisons who also are learning to read and write. Think when you set out of a morning, that at the same moment, in your own city, thirty thousand other boys are going to shut themselves up like you, in various school rooms, to study. Indeed, think of the innumerable boys in all lands, who, nominally at the same hour, are on their way to school. See them, in fancy, going, going, along lanes in quiet vil- lages, along the streets of bustling cities, along the shores of lakes and banks of rivers, here under a burning sun, there amid fogs, sometimes in boats where the land is intersected by canals; on horseback over far-stretching prairies; in sledges over snow; through valleys and over hills; across forests and torrents; up along lone paths of mountains; alone, in pairs, in groups, in long files, all with books under their arms, clothed in a thousand forms, speaking a thousand tongues, from the remote school- houses of Russia, almost buried from view in ice, to the southernmost schoolhuts of Arabia,—millions upon mil- EXPOSITION 139 lions, all pressing forward to learn the same things in a hundred nations, this tremendous movement of which you form a part, and think,—if this movement should cease, mankind would fall back into barbarism. This movement is the progress, the hope, and the glory of the world. Here the author first sets forth, in quantitative details; what lies under the common notion of schools and schooling. He seems to think that the appeal to comradeship, which his scenic review supplies, is all that will be necessary to rally Enrico over into the general muster. He might have shown how study pays, after the orthodox fashion, by appealing to the example of some Italian dignitary who, by surreptitious self- effort in the days of Austrian oppression, grew to strength, and became a leader. Or, oppositely, it would have been natu- ral to point to some down-and-out figure, some social failure who, born to privilege, wasted his student life, aspired to noth- ing, and ended a public mockery. But De Amicis has no thought of preaching, or of drawing stupidly obvious morals. He does the original thing of setting conditions, and allowing his son the profit of personal discovery. He ends confidently with the O. E. D. of this written interview, addressed not to Enrico only, but to the youth of Italy, and, as it has proved, of many other lands. When personal examples cannot be instanced in the develop- ment of a principle, we may often endow our work with imag- inative quality by feigning the existence of human elements or traits. By this expedient Henry Ward Beecher (Star Papers, I. xxx), on “A Certain Propriety in Storms,” makes palpable to thought certain half-fancied notions that we have perhaps considered too insubstantial to be indulged: Every one feels that storms are specialties, and fair weather the settled order in nature. Clear heavens, trans- parent air, and shining suns, are for common and daily use; good robust storms, for variety. But if it will rain, we do love decision and earnestness of purpose. We love to see Nature really in earnest, and blackfaced storms out as if they had a worthy errand. Great, rugged clouds, and the whole heaven full of them, winds that are wide awake, rain that comes as if it was not afraid of exhaust- 140 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY ing the supply, and general commotion of all sorts—these make one glad. We always wish life and energy in storms. Anything but a dull, foggy drizzle, either in storms or men. Exposition may be as precise and convincing as mathemat- ics, and yet not fall short in visual quality. Coleridge is often, as here (The Landing Place V), succinctly concrete and force- ful: Was it an insignificant thing to weigh the planets, to determine all their courses, and prophesy every possible relation of the heavens a thousand years hence? Yet all this mighty chain of science is nothing but a linking to- gether of truths of the same kind as, the whole is greater than its parts; or, If A and B each=C, then A= B; or 2-+4= 7, therefore 7-+5—12, and so forth.” Xis to be found in either A or B, or C or D. It is not found in A, B, or C; therefore it is to be found in D. What can be simpler? Apply this to a brute animal. A dog misses his master where four roads meet. He has come up one, smells two of the others, and then with his head aloft darts forward to the fourth road without any examina- tion. If this were done by a conclusion, the dog would have reason. How comes it then, that he never shows it in his ordinary habits? Why does this story excite either wonder or incredulity? . . . So awful and almost miracu- lous does the simple act of concluding that, “take three from four, there remains one,” appear to us, when at- tributed to one of the most sagacious of brute animals. A notion that we unconsciously derive concerning the worth or meaning of a thing, through long or constant familiarity with it as a fact, may be called “potential.” By this we sig- nify that our idea of its nature is not yet definite, but can be developed at any moment. An artist’s conception of an ideal face is potential only until he has worked it out into specific features by brush or crayon. ‘The architect’s notion of. the capitol he is to design remains potential until he has reduced it to outer definiteness by an outline projection. The inchoate conception of the perfect gentleman, which we have just now developed by the help of instances, was such a notion, lying ready, as one might fancy, to be expanded and added to our EXPOSITION 141 capital of analyzed ideas and wisdom. As has been noted, various other impressions, as of culture, of perfect breeding, of the ideal clergyman, or statesman, or teacher, are perhaps still potential with us, like the one considered. When we dis- cover from time to time that some notion of this kind is one- sided or inexact, we often explain by saying, “I hadn’t thought of that.” We thus imply that we have been acquiescing in a general assumption, which, because not yet canvassed, may be largely wrong. Along with notions originating in our own minds are others which, vaguely derived from reading or chance remarks of people, are still “potential” merely. Exposition is a means or process of refuting false ideas, as well as of developing and substantiating right ones. Thus many of us have probably imbibed the notion that fairy lore is essentially pagan and im- moral. But a writer in The London Illustrated News (Feb- ruary 28, 1908) confidently essays to establish, in these para- graphs, the very opposite: If you really read the fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one of them to the other—the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery tales. The whole happiness of fairyland hangs upon a thread, upon one thread. Cinderella may have a dress woven on supernatural looms and blazing with un- earthly brilliance; but she must be back when the clock strikes twelve. The king may invite fairies to the chris- tening, but he must invite all the fairies, or frightful re- sults will follow. Bluebeard’s wife may open all the doors but one. A promise is broken to a cat, and the whole world goes wrong. A girl may be the bride of the God of Love himself if she never tries to see him; she sees him, and he vanishes away. A girl is given a box on condition she does not open it; she opens it, and all the evils of this world rush out at her. This great idea, then, is the backbone of all folklore— the idea that all happiness hangs on one thin veto; all positive joys depend on one negative. Now, it is ob- vious that there are many philosophical and religious ideals akin to or symbolized by this; but it is not with them I wish to deal here. It is surely obvious that all ethics ought to be taught to this fairy-tale tune; that, if 142 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY one does the thing forbidden, one imperils all the things provided. A man who breaks his promise to his wife ought to be reminded that, even if she is a cat, the case of the fairy-cat shows that such conduct may be incau- tious. A burglar just about to open some one else’s safe should be playfully reminded that he is in the perilous posture of the beautiful Pandora; he is about to lift the forbidden lid and loosen evils unknown. The boy eat- ing some one’s apples in some one’s apple-tree should be a reminder that he has come to a mystical moment of his life, when one apple may rob him of all others. This is profound morality of fairy tales; which, so far from lawless, go to the root of all law. Instead of finding— like common books of ethics—a rationalistic basis for each commandment, they find the great mystical basis for all commandments. We are in this fairyland on sufferance; it is not for us to quarrel with the condition under which we enjoy this wild vision of the world. When we have developed the “potential” significance of facts or notions for ourselves, it is sometimes necessary to repeat the process at the instance or for the benefit of others. But the major satisfaction is achieved and spent when we have expressed and realized the full purpose of our idea. To make us repeat the steps of a spiritual discovery, with the forces of the mind only in part re-energized, is not good peda- gogy, and tends to induration. To write what we think, not while we think but afterwards, separates processes that, in usual and normal communication, belong together. For best literary profit, the conditions under which we are to write should favor spontaneity and strength. We should be helped in every way to compass the same zest in developing our ideas in written forms as we enjoy when we express them orally. So it will be better to select, so far as possible, subjects for first work in exposition that have not been staled by previous analysis or discussion. EXERCISES 1. Develop your notion of an ideal or perfected education. 2. Show, with somewhat of detail, what use, were you to come at once into possession of unlimited means, you would make of your wealth. EXPOSITION 143 3. On discovering that the farm which you are conceivably about to buy of an impoverished owner is mineral land of great value, what course would you pursue? Express your reasons fully. 4. Develop your idea of the eventual library that you expect to build, specifying departments, bindings and tooling proper for each, with arrangements of shelves and lighting. 5. Report in outline some example of oral exposition, not from a lecture or sermon, that you have lately chanced to hear. 6. What course of reading would you suggest for a young man, still a stranger to books, and without prospect of further or other education? 7. What is the most interesting book, so far as you remember, that you have ever read? Bring out the reasons why you esteem or have esteemed it such. 8. Compare the review departments in two or three daily jour- nals, and report, as in the last exercise, the best thinking and writing that you find. 9g. Of what value to a man or woman of liberal culture is the ability to sketch scenes or objects readily? 10. Give a description of some object whose form you have observed and analyzed since Chapter VIII. 11. Report from some chapter in your textbook of history what parts are narrative and what expository. CHAPTER XV FORMS OF EXPOSITION OUBTLESS many things have come to mind, since the last chapter, concerning Exposition. Our idea of it has been potentialized to such an extent that it would require some time to set forth all that lies back in our consciousness waiting to be said. We might profitably delay a little over some of our impressions which, if not the most challenging, may per- haps be most worth while of all. Exposition, as we now understand it, seems more native to the mind than narration or description. We may suspect, in fact, that it is more natural to think, than to observe. It is possible, from brain-fag or aversion, to stop seeing, or to re- fuse to see. It is even possible to look at an object and not see it at all. But if the act of perception is compassed, noth- ing can prevent that act of perceiving from merging into an act of thinking. It might seem absurd to venture this when we remember the insistence of certain English educators that only a few people are able to think at all. On the contrary, to think is of the very essence of mental life. In spite of our difficulty in making pupils and others think what and when we wish, nothing can stop them, when they have really seen an object, from thinking—that is, from inquiring within them- selves, by occasion of it—at least to the extent of What, or How, or Why. It is hard to overestimate the importance of this patent truth. A scientific pedagogy, graded up to the level of pupils trained to observe, may one day be developed from it. This principle is sufficient to guide us, for wise use of Ex- position, in studentship as well as teaching. What seeing will, in an organic way, and most readily, merge into thinking? On what matters are our “notions” warrantably and adequately potential? The question as to which avenue of our town 144 FORMS OF EXPOSITION 145 should be paved first or next will find almost every mind ready to answer with some degree of confidence. But an inquiry as to how the sentiment of the Solid South differs from the sentiment of the East, or of the Middle West, would interest but few of the people in the same city. Only those who had lived in both sections for a considerable time would at once be stirred by the consciousness that they knew and could read- ily and perhaps approximately answer. The question how mid-Victorian differs from present-day literature in America and England would arouse intelligence in still fewer minds. These questions are genuinely of the kind we have classed as “potential,” but are potential to those only who have been familiar—to repeat a former observation—with the conditions and elements compared. ‘Those to whom these things, the books and authors, and criticisms, are not potentializing, can- not profitably deal with them. To “get up” an acquaintance with recondite things like these that one has not lived with, that have not become a part of one’s subconscious self, in order to execute by way of them an “essay,”’ an exposition, is “academic” and illogical. It militates against the instincts of the mental life, hence is not educational, hence does more- harm than good. And, finally, it is exactly this principle which governs us, when we deal—no foolscap or pen in reach—with our fellows in face-to-face companionship, using vocal speech. If we have the “potential,” we are ready to tell, or discuss, or at least to talk. If we are not so provided, we are willing to be listeners to those who are, and have no idea of pretending to doing other or being other. This, too, is what the reader, the public, expects from those who are purveyors of the litera- ture they buy. Exposition will of course be various according as subjects differ, and as modes of treatment differ correspondingly. As to these latter, we shall be able here to note only products and examples. Procedures will be considered, under certain heads, in later chapters. Among those that involve no technical skill or preparation is the writing of editorials. These, as familiar comments on every-day facts and happenings, require no for- mal preambles or conclusions. The following, called forth by the peculiar circumstances of a famous strike, a few years 146 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY back, may be taken as representative of the vast body of news- paper exposition forced upon our attention from day to day: The situation at Winnipeg up to this time is unique in the history of labor troubles on this continent. For weeks now the city has been tied up by a strike. Nothing is done, it seems, save by consent of the strikers. Only such restaurants run as they allow to run. They have sup- pressed all newspapers except the one which speaks for the strikers. There is no mail delivery. Children get milk. No others do. Winnipeg is tied up merely because people refuse to work and also refuse to fight. There is no lawful way to make men work who don’t want to work. That would be slavery. There is nothing for the authorities to do. They are helpless so long as the strikers refrain from vio- tence. If the strikers were to indulge in a riot, military force could be called in and municipal activities resumed under martial law. Trouble of this kind has been immi- nent several times during the past week. Hostile paraders have threatened each other, but actual clashes have been prevented. The strikers appear to have discovered the power of peace and the weakness of force. Writing of this kind must range of course below the level of literary values, which are lasting. The daily editorial is mainly an expedient by which all classes of patrons have their common notions developed and languaged for them. Little leadership is involved or wanted. A knack of divining what lies at the top of the public or the party mind is the vital requisite,—not learning, not practice in expository writing. The newspaper is no longer a one-man’s instrument. It is fast taking on the character of a bonded informer and diarist, relentless in searching out the facts, the truth, pitiless in di- vulging all that the public has a right to know. The attempt to institutionalize exposition, a movement out of which the editorial grew, supplies an interesting chapter in the history of British literature. No like distinction can be claimed for any other nation. The literary essay is held to have begun with Montaigne, and to have been naturalized in England by Bacon. It would be hard to prove that it did not originate with Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, or even earlier. Cowley helped it across from Bacon to Addison and Steele. FORMS OF EXPOSITION 147 Then for fifty years was it over-written and over-published. From the outer requirement of writing recurrently, and not from the influence of insistent potentials within, was the essay of this era born. It was not natural exposition, which springs from inspiration, and ceases, when the potential has been ex- pounded, with it. The result was to lower the level of literary communication to the calendar level of having to communicate, —of perfunctory “invention” and expression. The need and the expectancy having been institutionalized, the expositor’s column as well as the poet’s corner of the newspaper came to be institutionalized and “featured.” The abuse of the mode tended of course to correct itself. In the fulness of time, the professional essay yielded its pres- tige to the novel. Scott was found to have usurped the throne of Johnson. Later, while Newman and his yokefellow re- formers were vindicating the highest claims of the old school, Combe and like popularizers were laying the essay level with the ground. More conspicuously in this country did it lie wounded and forlorn. It is not altogether an exaggeration to aver that Holmes administered to it, with his Autocrat papers, its coup de grace. Willis with his Letters from under A Bridge, his sister Mrs. Parton with her innumerous Fern Leaves, and much, very much of moribundia besides, dropped suddenly from sight. This is the passage in which Holmes al- ludes contemptuously to the reigning manner: Do not think, because I talk to you of many subjects briefly, that I should not find it much lazier work to take each one of them and dilute it down to an essay. Borrow some of my old coilege themes and water my remarks to suit yourselves, as the Homeric heroes did with their melas oinos, that black, sweet, sirupy wine (?) which they used to alloy with three parts or more of the flowing stream. Yet this seer, often credited with giving the Aiélantic its existence, seems not to have had in mind the typical, vital quality of the essay as properly considered. Its breath of life, as Holmes himself illustrates, is personality. Mainly medita- tional, like the nocturne in music, it feels its way through asso- 148 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY ciations of thought and feeling, redolent and revelative of the self that has lost itself for the time being out of the actual world of touch and sight and hearing. Holmes surely, even if as claimed the most brilliant and teeming of Yankee wits, must have excepted Lamb from the duncehood he satirizes. Had he not read these parts of Grace before Meat? I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my din- ner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts—a grace before Milton—a grace before Shakspeare—a devotional exercise proper to be said be- fore reading the Fairy Queen? . I once drank tea in company with two Methodist di- vines of different persuasions, whom it was my fortune to introduce to each other for the first time that evening. Before the first cup was handed round, one of these rever- end gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity, whether he chose to say anything. It seems it is the cus- tom with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little less importance he made answer that it was not a custom known in his church: in which courteous evasion the other acquiescing for good manners’ sake, or in compliance with a weak brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was waived altogether. With what spirit might not Lucian have painted two priests of his religion playing into each other’s hands the compliment of performing or omitting a sacrifice—the hungry god meantime, doubtful of his in- cense, with expectant nostrils hovering over the two flamens, and—as between two stools—going away in the end without his supper. Holmes has supplied us abundantly with further specimens of Exposition, which may be called Parenthetic, or Incidental. The origin of the mode is not difficult to trace. Two neigh- bors shaking hands over their division fence, and genially agreeing that it is a glorious morning, cannot keep from co- operatively reasoning out, in the next breath, whether there shall be rain, or frost, or whether the season promises to be droughty, or business to be slow. In real life everywhere, FORMS OF EXPOSITION 149 there will be always a constant quantum of thought substance in conversation, proportionate with the rest of talk, and all served, so to speak, on a common salver, without entrées, and with a heavy course of preachments and advice dispensed with altogether. The like is coming to be true of written intercourse and communication. Authorship is close approaching alliance and even fellowship with its public. The tone of literature is grow- ing less officious and presuming. The piece de résistance of formal, moralizing exposition has been dispersed throughout the intellectual diet of the day, not only in articles and ad- dresses, but in works on biography and history. The old- time essay is not dead, as some critics insist, not by any means. We assimilate its substance, as in conversation, unconsciously, in applied morsels. Its thoughts, its sentences remain often as scattered parts, yet serving approximately, in effect, the pur- pose of a whole. This is true more palpably of our modern fiction. One might assert, for a half-truth, that the English novel has been built upon the ruins of exposition. Whole pages of such substance, practically dissociated from the march of the plot, are met with in our chief novelists, and are not skipped by many a reader who could not be induced to sit down to a “course” of essays proper. The public thus gets all the philosophical or moralizing substance that it cares for, without having it supplied in a different volume and at an- other time. In the first dozen chapters of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, not less than 18 per cent is essay matter. Here are ex- amples from Meredith, the unprofessional essayist, in partner- ship with Meredith the professional writer of fiction: Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes, not written or formally taught, but intuitively un- derstood by all, and invariably acted upon by the loyal and the true. The race is not nearly civilized, we must remember. Thus, not to follow your leader whitherso- ever he may think proper to lead; to back out of an expe- dition because the end of it frowns dubious, and the pres- ent fruit of it is discomfort; to quit a comrade on the road, and return home without him: these are tricks which no boy of spirit would be guilty of, let him come to any description of mortal grief in consequence. Better 150 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY so than have his own conscience denouncing him sneak. Some boys who behave boldly enough are not troubled by this conscience, and the eyes and the lips of their fellows have to supply the deficiency. They do it with just as haunting, and even more horrible pertinacity, than the inner voice, and the result, if the probation be not very severe and searching, is the same. The leader can rely on the faithfulness of his host: the comrade is sworn to serve. When we are losing balance on a precipice we do not think much of the thing we have clutched for support. Our balance is restored and we have not fallen; that is the comfortable reflection: we stand as others do, and we will for the future be warned to avoid the dizzy stations which cry for resources beyond a common equilibrium, and where a slip precipitates us to ruin. When, further, it is a woman planted in a burning blush, having to idealize her feminine weakness, that she may not rebuke herself for grovelling, the mean material acts by which she sustains a tottering position are speed- ily swallowed in the one pervading flame. She sees but an ashen curl of the path she has traversed to safety, if any- thing. In contrast with this peculiar manner of exposition, not yet a century old, stands another, the oldest of all, and derived from the oratory of classical times. This is the Sermon. It is more or less directly interpretative of some important prin- ciple or caption called a Text. It is often developed from an idea considered or called (Chapter XXI) original. So far as designed to be persuasive, it involves the quality (Chapter XXII) of Argumentation. But it is at bottom expository, and depends for its value and success upon the organic soundness of its potentials, and the simplicity and concreteness of the treatment chosen. Studied and formal pulpit oratory, as known to us and as standardized under Greek and Roman rhetors, did not of course come in until the persecutions of the Early Church had ceased. A derivative of the sermon, and not unlike it in organiza- tion and method, is the Lecture. In New England, where it grew up as, in a sense, the foster child of the Election Ser- mon, it became the crowning element and feature of the Ly- FORMS OF EXPOSITION 151 ceum. Largely informative and instructive, it was ended often with a perorational appeal. Some of the profoundest thought of Emerson, as Nature, was first given to the public through this medium. In the closing quarter of the roth century, the Lyceum gave way before the Chautauqua movement, which since the Great War has much declined. Asa form of exposi- tion, the Lecture seems destined to revert to its medizval place in the universities. The question whether good exposition may not be made to exist through excellencies of management and style hardly needs consideration here. It should now be clear that things not worth while to say cannot be made worth saying by elab- oration or gracefulness of manner, whether spoken or writ- ten. Otherwise would Shakespeare’s Gratiano have ranked with him as Sir Oracle indeed. But things worth while to read or hear may be made more worth while by select and distinguished diction. Within a few years of the time when Lamb’s Essays of Elia were appearing in the London Maga- zine, William Hazlitt was producing papers on Literature, Men and Manners which from then till now have been thought remarkable for incisiveness and strength, though not for fin- ish. The following, from his essay, “On Egotism,” will illus- trate the essential qualities of his work, and of the class which he represents : The proud man fancies that there is no one worth re- garding but himself; he might as well fancy there is no other being but himself. The one is not a greater stretch of madness than the other. To make pride justifiable, there ought to be but one proud man in the world, for if any one individual has a right to be so, nobody else has. So far from thinking ourselves superior to all the rest of the species, we cannot be sure that we are above the mean- est and most despised individual of it: for he may have some virtue, some excellence, some source of happiness or usefulness within himself, which may redeem all other disadvantages. Even if he is without any such hidden worth, this is not a subject of exultation, but of regret, to any one tinctured with the smallest humanity, and he who is totally devoid of the latter, cannot have much reason to be proud of anything else. Arkwright, who invented the spinning jenny, for many years kept a paltry barber’s 152 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY shop in a provincial town. Yet at that time that won- derful machinery was working in his brain, which has added more to the wealth and resources of this country than all the pride of ancestry or insolence of upstart no- bility for the last hundred years. We should be cautious whom we despise. If we do not know them, we can have no right to pronounce a hasty sentence. If we do, they may espy some few defects in us. Here evidently what the author wishes and is impelled to say is not assisted by the way the sense comes out. Often one’s phrase seems to be supplied ideally from the strength of one’s inspiration. When a writer feels that he has not ex- pressed his best in his best way, he should consider his pro- duction worth his pains to retouch. MHazlitt apparently did not. For an example of exposition in which manner has not been neglected even at apparent cost of revision, we may compare this, from Channing’s Self-Culture: Some are discouraged from proposing to themselves im- provement, by the false notion that the study of books, which their situation denies them, is the all-important and only sufficient means. Let such consider that the grand volumes, of which all our books are transcripts, I mean nature, revelation, the human soul, and human life— are freely unfolded to every eye. The great sources of wisdom are experience and observation; and these are denied to none. To open and fix our eyes upon what passes without and within us is the most fruitful study. Books are chiefly useful as they help us to interpret what we see and experience. When they absorb men, as they sometimes do, and turn them from observation of nature and life, they generate a learned folly, for which the plain sense of the laborer could not be exchanged but at great loss. It deserves attention that the greatest men have been formed without the studies which at. present are thought by many most needful to improvement. Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, never heard the name of chemistry, and knew less of the solar system than a boy in our common schools. Not that these sciences are unim- portant; but the lesson is, that human improvement never wants the means, where the purpose of it is deep and earnest in the soul. FORMS OF EXPOSITION 153 Finally, we instance a paragraph from Ruskin, to end our general survey. Though often quoted, it seems best to instance it again as embodying depth, and finish, and fervor in a degree not easy to surpass. It also exhibits and signalizes the most vital feature of exposition, which it is not too early to mention, namely, Concreteness, and which will be discussed with some fulness in Chapter XXVIII. The orders of animals are the serpent and the bird; the serpent, in which the breath or spirit is less than in any other creature, and the earth-power greatest ;—the bird, in which the breath or spirit is more full than in any other creature, and the earth-power least. We will take the bird first. It is little more than a drift of the air brought into form by plumes; the air is in its quills, it breathes through its whole frame and flesh, and glows with air in its flying, like blown flame: it rests upon the air, subdues it, surpasses it, outraces it; nes air, conscious of itself, conquering itself, ruling itself. Also, in the throat of the bird is given the voice of the air. All that in the wind itself is weak, wild, use- less in sweetness, is knit together in its song. As we may imagine the wild form of the cloud closed into the perfect form of the bird’s wings; so the wild voice of the cloud into its ordered and commanded voice; unwearied, rippling through the clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting all intense passion through the soft spring nights, bursting into acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping and twittering among the boughs and hedges through heat of day, like little winds that only make the cowslip bells shake, and ruffle the petals of the wild rose. Also, upon the plumes of the bird are put the colors of the air: on these the gold of the cloud, that cannot be gathered by any covetousness; the rubies of the clouds, that are not the price of Athena, but are Athena; the vermilion of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the cloud- crest, and the snow of the cloud, and its shadow, and the melted blue of the deep wells of the sky—all these, seized by the creating spirit, and woven by Athena herself into films and threads of plume; with wave on wave following and fading along breast, and throat, and opened wings, infinite as the dividing of the foam and the sifting of the sea-sand ;—even the white down of the cloud seeming to flutter up between the stronger plumes, seen, but too soft for touch. 154 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY And so the Spirit of the Air is put into, and upon, this created form; and it becomes, through twenty centuries, the symbol of divine help, descending, as the Fire, to speak, but as the Dove, to bless. We see that there is, in this, form as well as unction, and that the form equally with the unction comes from the inspira- tion of the theme. We are conscious, also, of unusual har- mony, a quality which, as part of form, makes the finish more palpable to the ear. In contrast with Exposition, which is primarily detailed thinking, is to be reckoned Explanation. We “explain” how to describe a scene, or draw it, by indicating steps in a process. But, if we are asked to give reasons why we take such steps severally, or proceed at all, we must appeal to principles, and attempt some sort or degree of exposition. Explanation is employed perhaps oftenest in making known the construction of complex objects, or the manner in which they should be used. The following, from Darwin’s Voyage of a Naturalist (Chapter III), illustrates both these forms: The Bolas, or balls, are of two kinds; the simplest, which is chiefly used for catching ostriches, consists of two round stones, covered with leather, and united by a thin plaited thong, about eight feet long. The other kind differs only in having three balls united by the thongs to a common center. The Gaucho holds the smallest of the three in his hand, and whirls the other two round and round his head; then, taking aim, sends them like chain shot revolving through the air. The balls no sooner strike any object than, winding round it, they cross each other, and become firmly hitched. The size and weight of the balls varies, according to the purpose for which they are made: when of stone, although not larger than an apple, they are sent with such force as sometimes to break the leg even of a horse. I have seen the balls made of wood, and as large as a turnip, for the sake of catching those animals without injuring them. The balls are some- times made of iron, and these can be hurled to the greatest distance. The main difficulty in using the bolas is to ride so well as to be able, at full speed and while sud- denly turning about, to whirl them so steadily round the head, as to take aim. On foot any person would soon learn the art. One day, as I was amusing myself by gal- FORMS OF EXPOSITION 155 loping and whirling the balls round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush; and its revolving motion be- ing thus destroyed, it immediately fell to the ground, and like magic caught one hind leg of my horse; the other ball was then jerked out of my hand, and the horse fairly secured. Luckily he was an old practiced animal, and knew what it meant; otherwise he would probably have kicked till he had thrown himself down. The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried out that they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen aman caught by himself. Exposition is sometimes treated as identical with Explana- tion, but is generally considered a higher concept. We should hardly expect one to speak of “explaining” his notion of de- cency or civility. But we should expect the manager of an in- surance office to explain why he accounted one certain solici- tor more profitable to the business than another. Any sort of paradox or obscurity or difficulty, we may explain away, but do not expound “away.” Authorities make an exposition of the doctrine of evolution, of free will, of state sovereignty, of protection, of free trade. We explain the discrepancies in an account. We expound the theory of least squares. We ex- plain the mystery of a robbery. We explain the circular course followed by cranes in migrations across the Mediterranean, but attempt to provide an exposition of the laws of instinct by which the “power of the air” compels and governs its crea- tures in their tireless yearly flittings. We explain facts by facts. We expound or demonstrate major truths and princi- ples, as in geometry, by minor truths. The most practicable materials from which to make stud- ies in exposition are the impressions left upon our minds by the literature we read. At the moment of laying down a book, we are almost always persuaded, and confidently, as to its pur- port and value. All such effects of reading are potential no- tions of a high order, and are capable of being reduced to prin- ciples and conclusions of surprising interest and concern. It is easy to make over an exposition of this kind, by mending its proportions and diction into a review, a criticism, or al- most any other kind of written contribution that we may be called upon to furnish. Were we resolutely to execute the pur- 156 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY pose, on finishing the reading of a worthy piece of literature, of at once developing the impressions derived from it, we should in no long time acquire, not only readiness and facility of phrase, but also the rarer and more difficult accomplishment that is called a Style. EXERCISES 1. Read Wendell Phillips’s lecture on The Lost Arts, report what you discover to be its purpose, and specify what parts are in- formative, what explanatory, and what finally are expositional. 2. Read the address again, and with it any two others of the series. Observe the author’s manner of opening and closing in each case, and make a comparative report. 3. Show why this country has been called The Land of Oppor- tunity. 4. Of what effects from the Great War upon people of your town or neighborhood do you find yourself aware? Develop your idea or ideas fully. 5. Examine the editorial matter in your daily newspaper, for a period of days, and copy what seem examples of worth-while exposition. 6. Detail the points of exposition as gathered from some recent sermon. 7. Read Newman’s Idea of a University, and make report of what he brings out by exposition. 8. What does a college-bred man owe the community in which he settles? In what ways may he discharge his obligation? g. Examine one of Frederick W. Robertson’s sermons, and dis- cuss in brief the form, the vigor, and the finish of the exposition. 10. Find a good example of Explanation, and expound why it is not Exposition. 11. Explain how the cinematograph can be utilized to exhibit, in a few seconds, the development of an American Beauty Rose, through many days, from bud to full expansion. 12. Compare the essay papers in two or three standard month- lies, and discuss any that seem to belong to our third class of exposition. 13. Develop, in two or three paragraphs of exposition, your idea of rhetoric as a means of learning to write, and as an aid to the appreciation of good writing. 14. Read rapidly but carefully the best-selling novel of the FORMS OF EXPOSITION 157 moment, and express pointedly your strongest impressions and con- victions. 15. Make an explanation of some device or experiment of your own contriving. 16. Imagining yourself a trained and accomplished writer, able to produce any sort of literature at will, indicate what work you would first put in shape to publish. Sketch out the idea that comes to your mind, showing how you would begin, how divide and develop the subject, and what persons or incidents or experiences you would introduce. CHAPTER XVI CHARACTERIZATION VERY man’s character is in a sense his secret, and can- not be known except through signs observed and inter- preted by his fellows. Before any one can present a charac- ter, he must have read it and realized it, from such signs, with approximate accuracy and completeness. Fortunately, we learn how to read character rather early, and without waiting to be taught. To the end of our lives, we employ ourselves, and in general much more than we are aware, in noting and interpreting marks of personality. We gain our conceptions of character by a double process that may be called Imaginative Inference. We infer a char- acter from signs, and we construct it in fancy, virtually at the same instant. For example, some well-dressed woman tries to get into the line, ahead of us at the stamp-window, and we find ourselves losing sight of her outward looks in the discovery of the inconsiderate and self-seeking disposition that controls her. Some prominent townsman, in the same line, is seen insisting that a shamefaced boy shall not be crowded from his place, but shall have his turn before himself. At once our minds merge the physical presence of the man in a vision of the inner nature which he has unwittingly disclosed. On the street, a moment after, we see a drayman lashing his overloaded horses. We immediately envisage his irascible and unreasonable personality, and pronounce him unfit to deal re- sponsibly with animals or men. Here again, as we note, the mind is not satisfied with acts or facts as such, but must go back to the motives which have inspired them. The behavior of the townsman towards the shamefaced lad was due to a principle of justice which be- came, for the moment, the absorbing, compelling element in his nature, otherwise the whole man could hardly have been drawn into an action so conspicuous and unusual. The real 158 CHARACTERIZATION 1359 disposition of the woman presumed to be a lady remained un- suspected until she tried to appropriate the rights of those who had come earlier than herself. The man who abused his horses betrayed a principle of cruelty that proved stronger than the other forces in his nature. We know at once what each of these actions means, since it is a typical act, carrying always the same moral significance, and denoting always the same trait of character as its cause. We not only read character continually, but almost as con- stantly draw it. For contrast, we shall see how Bjornson, in Synnove Solbakken, presents the character of Aslak: Aslak was ready at once, so they threw snowballs first at the slender spruce over by the store-house, then at the store-house door, and finally at the store-house window. “Not at the window itself,” said Aslak, “but at the frame around it.’ Meanwhile Thorbear hit a window pane, and turned pale. “Pooh! Who will know it? Try again.” Thorbear did so, but hit another. By this single act of inveigling the younger lad into breaking his father’s windows, the author makes us see, not only Aslak’s cunning, which prompted the trick, but his whole na- ture. Besides, we picture to ourselves, more or less clearly, the face and figure of Aslak, as indeed also of his victim. The means used here is what is called, in Chapter V, the Visualizing Action. It is evident that the visual acts which were used there, as examples, exhibited in outline the char- acters severally considered. We actually sketched, in each case, the personality merely to make the reader construct an exterior appearance to match the character. We now utilize the product which was then brought into existence for the sake of this by-product. It is clear also how a typical act makes the character of the doer a unit to imagination. The whole man or woman is involved consentingly or morally in each manifestation of personality. Of course an action, such as Bjornson uses, serves to out- line a character merely, just as the first strokes of an artist set out the type of face or form. The author can add fea- 160 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY tures afterwards as needed. Subordinate personalities, such as Aslak’s here, are often left mere outlines, like figures sketched by cartoonists for the papers. But the principal characters in fiction, when drawn by master hands, are continually under the brush, like an important portrait that the artist is never in the mood to finish. But there is a further effect from drawing character be- yond discerning personality, as such, from action given. Read- ing our example again, we note that we do not stop at seeing what Aslak is now in his inner nature. We more pointedly and completely visualize what he will grow into, and what bigger mischief he will be sure to do, not with boys but gul- lible men and women, at his maturity. This is the essential part of character-drawing, and furnishes its chief significance in literary art. In literature and in paint- ing, as in actual life, we are more concerned with what a per- sonality is in potencies than with what it is in actuals. Imag- ination insists on taking a further step, and visualizing or real- izing the given character in action. To indicate probable con- duct is generally the governing motive when we draw a char- acter for the benefit of others, or when others draw charac- ters that we need to know. At a bank not long ago, a student customer endorsed for his friend a promissory note. On receiving the money, this friend, without stopping to count it, thrust the roll of bills into the pocket of his ulster, and hurried away. The cashier of the bank took the endorser to task for signing the note. “Can’t you see,” he said, “that a man who handles money in a way like that is no responsible person? You will have to pay that loan.” The action of the mind, which behaves consistently in all such cases, is easily analyzed. The careless handling of the money 1S recognized as a typical act. The mind goes back of this typical action and infers a trait of recklessness as its cause. “The man is careless about money that is not his. He has then a character that renders him indifferent to his obliga- tions.” Imagination now takes the forward step, and from this cause confidently discerns, as a conclusion, that he will fail of his duty in this case. The former action, its moral CHARACTERIZATION 161 quality as a cause, and the effect that will follow in the present instance, are all seen visually in a single flash of insight. The conclusion is alone of vital concern, and is really that which has aroused and holds, subconsciously, the energy of our thought. There is progression of imaginative interest in such cases, as will have been noted, if there is interest at all. This will be clearer if we indicate the steps graphically, by a diagram: SPHERE OF IMAGINA- el papasel re UMAGINATIVE TION AND THE INTEL- EFFECT LECTUAL LIFE INTENDED MATERIAL SPHERE OF THE SENSES AND THE PHYSICAL LIFE The act of thrusting the large roll of bills loosely in the pocket of an overcoat engages our attention to a degree which may be represented by the circle marked “Effect Given.” This happens of course in the outside, material sphere, and is seen by the physical eye. Then the field shifts to the world of imagination. We are drawn to visualize the character that has inspired the initial action, and we indicate the larger product and the enlarged interest by the circle “Character as Cause.” Our concern is greatest when we find pictured in fancy the eventual defection of the borrower and the betrayal of his friend. This climax feature we attempt to signify by the relative largeness of the final circle. It is remarkable how the world at large stakes its chiefest public as well as its smallest private concerns upon its faith in the last step of this imaginative though logical procedure. Our Naval Bureau in 1898 chose Captain Clark, from a con- tingent of doughty officers, to bring the Oregon round Cape Horn towards Cuba in the teeth of the Spanish fleet. He 162 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY had shown strange patience and dogged persistence in playing chess, and from his way of playing chess as an “act given” a character was pictured, and from this character as a common “cause,” he was judged capable of evading capture and find- ing the Atlantic squadron. Napoleon, friendless, despairing, won the chance of crushing the faithless National Guards, with grapeshot, and by this act impressed the Convention with his power and daring. From the character thus con- ceived, he was inferred worthy to command the Army of the Interior, and began his meteoric career. In both these cases, the confidence felt in the decision amounted in effect to certi- tude. In the vividness with which the “cause” or personality was envisaged lay the sureness of conviction. In matters of merely personal moment, a single illustration will suffice. A somewhat fastidious young graduate of Yale became inter- ested, while on travel in the Orient, in a young countrywoman of singular accomplishments and charm, but lost such interest after hearing her pronounce umbrella as if r were the last letter. His change of feeling was caused by dread, not so much of hearing the word again, as of deeper flaws in culture, which this slip seemed threateningly to presage. But of noth- ing in this man’s after life was he surer than of his wisdom in suspending an acquaintanceship which had been most aus- piciously begun. It will have perhaps been noted that the “common cause” in each of the examples now considered is really a “potential notion” of the kind considered under Exposition. In charac- ter-drawing by emotional inference, the personality visualized can never be other or better than potential. The intended ef- fect of character-drawing, as represented by the third and largest circle, can hardly be accomplished if more than a single typical action is brought to view at the same time. Most characterizations kept alive by popular tradition, as of Giotto and his circle, and of Washington and the cherry tree, illus- trate the principle. Oral characterizations, which are in gen- eral the most potent and vivid that we know, are usually ef- fected by a single typical act. The same is true of character treatment in newspapers, when the discussion is dropped after a single anecdote. Not long ago, the New York Evening Post CHARACTERIZATION 163 published this incident relating to Dr. Bull, the famous sur- geon, who had lately died: While Dr. Bull was already ill with his fatal distemper, a young doctor called to ask advice concerning a poor girl in his neighborhood, who would surely die unless operated upon immediately. Dr. Bull, at once taking his Overcoat, proposed to see the patient. They found the girl in an East Side tenement, and in less time than it takes to tell it, Dr. Bull had the room cleared and began the operation. When he was leaving, the father of the girl met him in the hali, and forced a quarter into his hand. Dr. Bull went off feeling as happy,—happier than if he had received a thousand-dollar fee. The girl got well. New York will miss Doctor Bull. We notice that the writer does not say, on finishing the story, that he has drawn the character of Dr. Bull. Nor does he formulate what the character was. He takes for granted that we see it, as he sees it, in what he tells. His concern is only with the third circle,—that is, with making his reader feel as well as conceive the worth of such a figure to the community and the times. It is thus clear why the specification of implied traits in a given character is the prerogative of the reader and not the writer. It is as impertinent to assume that we can develop the features in a personality, which others discern with us, bet- ter than those who read or hear. When the writer in the Post had grasped the meaning of Dr. Bull’s personality, he pre- sented an action inspired by it which enabled us to grasp it with him. To do more would not be art, which disdains to explain its meanings. To draw a character is to use art, and by this means make our reader discover it imaginatively for himself. If he does not so discover it and discern it, no enumer- ation or discussion of traits will supply the lack. To at- tempt this is not the method of life, which the Post reporter follows, and would only bore and perhaps distress the discern- ing part of the public served. All men and women, of every race and speech, engage in- cessantly in oral characterizations of the kind just shown, and seem always unconscious of their processes. Most authors 164 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY to-day draw character similarly, by instinct, seldom inquiring how they make or have made their work effective. But now and then a writer becomes reflective, and analyzes the behavior of his mind. This means that characterization, now as always an art, is beginning to be a science also. Bram Stoker speaks thus of the manner in which he prepared his Reminiscences of Henry Irving (Vol. I, p. ix): As I cannot give the myriad of details and impressions which went to the making up of my own convictions, I have tried to select such instances as were self-sufficient for the purpose. If here and there I have been able to lift for a single instant the veil which covers the mystery of individual nature, I shall have made something known which must help the lasting memory of my dear dead friend. One of our prominent American authors explains his method with more detail. When he is preparing, he reports, to write a novel, he makes an inventory of the actions that might be used as means of exhibiting his chief character. Selecting the most prominent of these, he draws the character in proper form, and adjusts the treatment to the story. Putting the page or paragraph aside, he waits till the text is cold, then tests the effectiveness of the actions used. If they do not seem to engage imagination potently enough, he makes another trial, choosing other acts and traits. When the treatment carries, he copies in the work. He deals with other characters, as they are brought on by the plot, in the same way. If we take up any good novel that lies in reach, we shall dis- cover the same method, with little variation, of setting on foot the story. There is some conspicuous act of strength, or skill, or of moral greatness, which the author will make imagination accept as typical of the hero or the heroine that is to be. In Cynthia Stockley’s The Claw—which we choose from books at hand, and which is laid in South Africa before the Boer War—the author thus presents the hero in her woman’s way: There was just the faintest suspicion of a rustling of leaves. An instant later something in my companion’s intent gaze and attitude told me that the psychological CHARACTERIZATION 165 moment had come. He could see something and was taking aim. I glanced at the dim, shadowy mass of foliage towards which his rifle pointed, and for one moment saw nothing. Then something huge and pale and massive came bounding high in the air out of the shadows and the horse cried out like a human being. The Martini- Henry cracked twice and a blinding flash of gunpowder filled the air. Later I heard, “There’s no danger. Only we must be quiet. There’s probably another of them about. I should like to pot him too.’ Needless to say, I sat still with all my might. The great honey-colored body fascinated my eyes, but there was something ex- traordinarily reassuring in the scent of mingled gun- powder and tobacco that hung about the gray flannel sleeve close to me. Characterizations are sometimes remarkable for their brev- ity. This is from De Morgan’s Likely Story (p. 175): Miss Jennie Bax, another niece, who was shy and seventeen. She began everything she said with “Oh!” Our first studies in written or literary characterization will involve bringing under the eye of consciousness our personal, oral command of the universal mode. We have been drawing character daily, ever since we can remember, and drawing it doubtless as clearly and strongly as our fellows. We must do it now by selection, assembling and comparing all of the typi- cal actions that we have seen. It is with these that the people about us have inadvertently lifted, from ourselves, “the veil which covers the mystery of individual nature.” It is only with the best of these that we can lift the veil effectually from individual nature, by character-drawing, to our readers. EXERCISES 1. Report the best example of offhand oral character-drawing that you have heard recently or to-day, and discuss its visual effectiveness and strength. 2. Draw the character of some strong or energetic person whom you have at some time known, by use of a single visual action. | 3. Recall other typical actions of this person, and determine 166 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY if possible the one by which you were enabled to read the char- acter. 4. Report in writing, from current fiction, two good examples of character-drawing, and show means employed. Add, in sepa- rate paragraphs, some discussion of the success and merits of the work in each. 5. Give an account of some striking incident, lately observed, which could serve as material for a literary characterization. 6. Recall and reconstruct an impromptu oral characterization which you have lately ventured, and which seemed at the moment especially vivid and satisfying. Show how it differs from the one you would be likely to draw, of the same person, if begun re- flectively and in writing. 7. Make a report of your latest experience in reading char- acter, and instance the act that arrested attention and forced you to visualize the personality. 8. Report a number of visual actions, personally observed at large, which could serve as materials for literary use. g. Select one from the actions just reported, and frame with it a characterization that might be entered as a paragraph in a novel or short story. 10. Recall and copy from books which you have read the most striking example of characterization that you remember, and make an explanation or exposition of the reasons for its vividness and power. CHAPTER XVII CHARACTERIZATION (CONTINUED) T is easier to read character than to draw it. We often discern a personality, vividly, that we seem unable to pre- sent, with any degree of clearness, to either hearers or readers. The best visual action that we can select, actions that have enabled us to read character confidently, may fail wholly of such effect when told to those not with us when the acts were seen. We are thus forced often to search out stronger means, in drawing character, than first attracted us to the given per- sonality and made us wish to share our appreciation of it with other minds. Visual actions, as has been shown, compel imagination to realize the transaction mentioned, and incidentally the physi- cal presence, as well as the personality. But visual actions, as we have perhaps begun to suspect, are not the only signs or proofs, and are often by no means the most significant signs or proofs, of character. The vital element in visualizing action is the individual soul, or quality of will, that governs in the given case. This element is often evinced in physical action not at all typical or characteristic of the person per- forming it. Not many years ago, on a farm in a Mid-Western state, lived a boy who aspired to a college education. He knew that such education was free at the state university, and he developed plans for graduation there. Then the times grew hard. His father died and left the care of his mother to his hands. Through the influence of local politicians, he secured the post of page at the state capitol during a session of the legislature. A maximum rate bill had been forced through the senate, and he chanced to be chosen to carry it, after it was signed, to the engrossing com- mittee. In the corridor he was stopped by a railway at- torney, who excitedly offered him five hundred and then a thousand dollars to suRW: a bill to leave his hands a 168 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY moment. Visions of four years at the university, in the instant of delay, rose in his thought. He realized also, in a flash of fancy, the consciousness he must carry, if he yielded, all his life through, and the folly of buying higher education for his mind at cost of degrading his whole nature, and he passed, shaking his head almost im- perceptibly but firmly, to the engrossing rooms. General Putnam’s exploits of shooting the wolf in the cavern, and of spurring his horse down a stone staircase of a hundred steps, are visual actions clearly differentiated from known deeds of other men. But the physical act of moving one’s head slightly from side to side furnishes no adequate means of dis- tinguishing one human personality from another. The be- havior of the youth, as he went past his tempter to the com- mittee room, probably differed in no determinate way from the gait and movements of other pages or other folk, yet the transaction was doubtless unique in history. The incident stands pictured more vividly in our minds than many re- membered scenes of large moment to ourselves. The manner in a physical act of speaking offers no usual means of dis- tinguishing one mind or one nature from another, while the matter in and behind the act may differentiate the speaker notably, as in the final quotation of the last chapter, from all others of his circle. We must then distinguish visualizing actions from typical actions, of which they constitute a considerable subclass. Typical actions, if sufficiently intense in motivation, need not be outwardly visual, or palpably physical at all. Numerous examples might be cited. In 1903, a Boston gentleman discovered a mine in the Klondike, and removed with his family to Dawson, to develop it. In the winter following, while returning on foot from the settlement with his son, he was seized with drowsiness. He was worn with the fatigue of the out- ward journey, which the son, a youth of fourteen years, had not chanced to share. This son, realizing the danger, urged his father to keep in motion. Finding this unavail- ing, the youth feigned that he was himself attacked with a like fit of drowsiness, and proposed that they both give themselves up to a brief period of sleep. To save his CHARACTERIZATION 169 son, the father roused himself. At length they reached the camp, but only by the father’s threatened and actual use of the dog-whip, since the boy pleaded continually to be allowed a moment’s rest. The physical act of the father’s lashing the youth is visual enough, but that is not the compelling part of the incident. - The action of the son, who pleaded pretendingly for the chance to sleep, is the vital element, or (p. 161) the “effect given,” which makes the characterization and the picture. His in- sistent strategy stimulates our minds to visualize the largeness of his nature and strength of will, together with the con- spicuous career implied for the future, by way of the third circle, in this adolescent heroism. The secret of imaginative discernment does not in general reside so much in the exercise of will as in the moral con- sciousness that inspires and governs it. Intimations of moral quality instantly and intimately visualize the personality. One of the fishermen at a summer resort, while making obtrusive pretensions to wealth and social prominence, had spoken of rowing stroke for Yale on the winning crew of ’85, and of haunting almost all the chief streams of the country with rod and line. In his absence one day, this conversation occurred at dinner: “What do you think Turner has been vaporing about to-day ?” “Oh, of some other big ranch of his at Pasadena, or a yachting trip to Panama perhaps.” “When I spoke about catching bass in the Susquehanna, some years ago, he said he had fished over the whole length of it, down to the point where it falls into the Potomac.” “Oh, he did, did he? That shows, then, what he is.” That the fellow had not fished in the Susquehanna at the point where it falls into the Potomac was undoubted. Had he fished in it anywhere? No one of the company appeared to be thinking about that. All were absorbed, instead, in envisag- ing the fraudulent, unprincipled nature of the man. They were forming conclusions which amounted to conviction, and which were wholly sound. The man was proved a pretender, after a two weeks’ stay, by leaving behind some worthless checks, and a number of unpaid bills. 170 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY The attempt to install the Susquehanna as a branch of the Potomac was evidently a typical action of this adventurer. Every one in the company accepted it as such unhesitatingly, as they could not otherwise, in good faith, have judged him by it. They assumed moral quality, instinctively—just as we assume it and all men assume it, as a norm, and they treated his case as a deviation from it. The word character carries no neutral connotation, but registers in itself the spiritual pre- sumption of the race. A man of character is a man of upright character. A man of principle is a man of sound principles, of standard ethics. We read the principles that show character by signs, which inspire imagination to visualize the character. We may then ¢all such signs Imaginative Appeals. We may note here that drawing character is a process similar to drawing an object, for the reader, by description, or to sketching a transaction for him by narration. To describe an object, we must have identified the recognized, standard ele- ments which compose it. We present to the reader such of these as are stimulating, and vital, and hold him to the task of combining and expanding them into an imaginative whole. To narrate a happening, we determine the standard or recog- nized modes of motion that help make it the individual thing it is. We indicate to the reader such of these as will engage his imagination to construct the whole. To draw a character, we discover typical, symptomatic actions, and exhibit some of these to the reader, as appeals to his imagination. From the motives or principles implied in these, he must be left to synthe- size and complete the nature or personality for himself. While the symptomatic actions that we notice and interpret seem numberless, they all belong to one or the other of two well-marked divisions of human character. One division com- prises traits or manifestations that belong to integrity, or moral soundness, or worth, or, of course, the opposites of these. The other division of personal qualities is distinguished by the name “beauty,” and sometimes “nobility,” of character. Some natures appear to us equally eminent in integrity and nobility of character. When a personality of this sort is dis- cerned, as in the career of a Lincoln, the general mind dis- tinguishes honesty of purpose from quickness of sympathy, CHARACTERIZATION 171 and idealizes the possessor in both aspects. The world at large recognizes Byron, because he devoted himself to the liberation of Greece, as a generous spirit. But other acts of his are re- membered as arguing deficiencies in moral worth. It is not the critics more than the commoner sort of readers who have char- acterized Scott, from the Marmion and Ivanhoe that he wrote and the Abbotsford that he built, as a lover of chivalry and romance. But they have characterized him not less, from his attempt, at cost of health and life, to liquidate a debt not his, as sublimely true. We have all recognized Mark Twain, from a multitude of imaginative appeals, as an exponent of the unserious side of life. His successful effort and Scott’s losing struggle to atone for the mistakes of others characterize these authors, more potently than anything else ever told of either, as of the highest moral worth. In general, no final presentation of character will be effected when the sympathetic nature or the moral nature is suggested singly. Imaginative appeals from both sides of the personality should be looked for. The following characterization, from Voltaire’s Life of Moliére, is manifestly incomplete: It is perhaps to Moliére that France owes Racine. He engaged the young author, now leaving Port Royal at the age of nineteen, to write for the theater. Mboliére thus obtained from him the tragedy of Theagenes and Chari- clea, and although the piece was too feeble to be played, he made the author a present of a hundred louis [$113], and sketched out to him the plan of The Hostile Brothers. He advanced and trained another dependent, the comedian Baron. One day, Baron came in to announce that a player from the country, whom poverty prevented from coming in person, begged for assistance that would enable him to join his troupe. Moliére, on finding out that the man was a certain Mondorge, once his associate, asked Baron how much he thought the man should have. Baron an- swered, at a venture, “Four pistoles” [$16]. “Give him four pistoles for me,” said Moliére. “Then here are twenty more [$78] that I wish you to give him for your- self.” And he added to this gift a splendid costume. These are trivial actions; but they paint the character. Of course trivial actions, and actions not accounted trivial, do not in themselves “paint” character. They merely furnish 172 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY means by which it may be painted, or visualized, if imagination wills. Whether imagination shall will or not will to visualize depends on the degree to which the given actions suit our ideals of nobility and worth. Acts which satisfy our ideals are never trivial. In the present case, the generosity which prompted the actions of Moliere answers closely to our ideal, and inspires imagination—which is a name of the soul in its constructive activities—to realize the character and the scene pictorially. When the personality offered for treatment does not appeal to our ideals in some degree, we are apt to present it by what is called description of character. This is a partial summary of traits, in abstract statements, such as, “He is scholarly,” “She has the artistic temperament,” “He is heavy-witted,”’ or “a genius,” or “a man of quick decision,” and the like. The © process is analytical, and does not generally engage imagination to combine the parts. But the taste of present times is satisfied with nothing short of characterization proper, which is an important feature of visual writing. Imaginative appeals always envisage the personality. The following will serve as an example of character presented by description, or analytical mention of traits: In personal appearance Ibrahim Pasha was a short, broad-shouldered man, with a red face, small eyes, and a heavy though cunning expression of countenance. He was as brave as a lion; his habits and ideas were rough and coarse; he had but little refinement in his composition; but, although I have often seen him abused for his cruelty in European newspapers, I never heard any well-authen- ticated anecdote of his cruelty, and do not believe that he was by any means of a savage disposition, nor that his troops rivalled in any way the horrors committed in Algeria by the civilized and fraternizing French. He was a bold, determined soldier. While an inventorying summary like this befits the subject, for Anglo-Saxon readers, it would scarcely have been satisfy- ing as means of presenting an American or British officer of equal prestige and force. We should have missed the per- sonalizing effect of “anecdotes” as imaginative appeals. Simi- v CHARACTERIZATION 173 larly, no countryman of Ibrahim Pasha, writing with native appreciation, would probably have been content to treat this martial character without some mention of visualizing action to signalize his strategy and daring. We may sketch the character of a class, as well as of an in- dividual, by “effects given,” or imaginative appeals. Bazin, in The Coming Harvest, thus presents groups of young country folk who have come to a French market-place in search of employment for the season: “The young men who desired positions as carters had a whip suspended about the neck. Those expecting to be field laborers were biting a green leaf, or wearing one in their hats. The girls held a rose in their hand. They were dressed as for work, in their shabbiest gowns, to pre- vent their prospective mistresses from judging them likely to be wasteful. Similarly we may characterize any group of persons—as a roomful of pupils, a military company, a band of musicians, or a mob—by some manifestation in which all feel and act as one. It is our habit to think of porters, cabmen, conductors, the police, firemen, waiters, and like social divisions as sets of people rather than individuals. We frequently look upon doctors, lawyers, and members of other professions as dis- tinguished rather by their calling than by personal traits. We sometimes criticize their actions as professional, that is, as typical respectively of their class and not their personality. Class characterization is often in consequence whimsical or satirical, and but loosely related to the concerns of life. On the other hand, the reading of character and the drawing of character in individuals is one of the most responsible of human accomplishments. All members of society are weighed and esteemed, in their respective circles, by signs or “‘effects given,” real or pretended, visual or inner. Thus is it that all domestic, social, and business relations are dependent funda- mentally upon mutual and correct discernment of character by the persons variously brought into association with each other. 174 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY EXERCISES 1. Recall two or more persons whose natures severally you have discerned through the medium of non-visualizing actions. Try whether you can effectively present the character of either by the means that first disclosed the character. 2. Make another presentation of the same character by use of a visualizing action of some kind. Add a paragraph of discus- sion comparing the strength and other merits of the two studies. 3. From good periodical or other literature at hand, report examples of characterization effected by non-visualizing action. 4. Select some personage that you know familiarly, and analyze the character with reference to traits of genuineness or worth and of nobleness. Select imaginative appeals answering to these divisions, and draw the character. 5. From current magazine short-stories or other fiction, find characterization similar, illustrating either worth or beauty of character, or both. 6. Report examples of characterization based upon traits of nobility alone. 7. Present the character of Washington by enumeration of traits, as in the example dealing (p. 172) with Ibrahim Pasha, making the paragraphs as definite and vivid as possible. 8. Rewrite the exercise, using typical and visualizing actions. Add a paragraph of discussion and criticism, to show principles illustrated. 9g. Characterize, by typical actions, your horse or dog, or other pet. 10. Effect the class characterization of an effeminate youth, as by his manner of holding or carrying school books, or by some like visualizing means. CHAPTER XVIII CHARACTERIZATION IN DEGREE NDIVIDUAL strength engages imagination not less than new types of personality. We often find ourselves in con- sequence reading character and also drawing it in degree rather than in kind. There are two kinds of typical actions, clearly distinguishable by the purpose for which they are respectively employed. When we say of any one, “He is this sort of person,” and follow with the report of an action that shows his character, it is evident that both the act and the characterization are of kind. But if we hear the remark, “He never repeats anything that you fail to understand. He always speaks deliberately and plainly, but says a thing once only,” we each recognize sub- consciously that the fact is told to make us realize the extent to which the quality of self-assertion is developed in the man. The typical action is now manifestly of the second or degree sort. Characterizations of kind serve the purpose of putting in- dividual persons into their proper class. An action inspired by stinginess makes us assign the doer to the class of stingy people. An observed act of civility makes us visualize the per- son performing it as in the class of gentlemen or gentlewomen. But characterizations of degree for a given class show the extent to which the classifying trait controls the nature of the men or women respectively considered or concerned as indi- viduals. A prominent jeweler in a certain city had the habit of locking up the butter from his wife and servants, after doling it out each morning for the day. The fact was told by a fellow tradesman to make his hearer realize the length to which this man would go in carrying out the principle of stinginess in his disposition. A well-groomed young man was seen to step into the gutter of a North-End street in Boston, to help an 175 176 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Italian woman, a rag-picker, adjust an overfilled bag to her shoulder. It was noted that, as he withdrew, he lifted to her his faultless silk hat as if she had been the first lady in the land. Persons witnessing the incident never lost it out of mind, but boasted of it years after as actualizing an ideal of breeding and culture, and evincing gentlemanliness carried to the limit in degree. If we watch the working of our minds, we shall discover that we make a clear distinction between typical acts of the two classes. Personality discerned in degree affects us very differently from personality discerned in kind. New types of individuality excite interest, but phenomenal gifts or feats arouse enthusiasm. From childhood we have been quick to note droll manners and have often sketched, or longed to sketch, various queer folk met with. Each one of us has his own gallery of singularities. Lively pictures, as of the old Quaker farmer, with broad-brimmed hat crowning his long white hair, as he rode with whip held erect and high past our country home, or of the spectacled school-dame, gaunt with unrelenting energy, come back to mind unsought. From later years, the stooping figure of the college president who always pronounced knowledge with the long sound of “o,” and the arrowy stature of the ambitious rector whose sion hair was always shaved an inch back of his forehead, stand out vivid in our thought. In certain moments of relaxation, we muse over the strongly marked types of men and women that rise before us from days long past. But while unconventional people attract us, through dif- ferences of kind, larger and more lasting satisfactions come to us from even common qualities ene in greatness of degree. Nothing stirs imagination more deeply than sov- ereignty of nature. Heine, himself a genius, taxes credulity in his report (Florentine Nights) of Paganini’s playing. Mo- zart’s seeming mastery of music at the age of six takes rank with the marvels of romance. In the biography of John Wil- son of Edinburgh, we are at once entranced by the intense temperament and strange powers of will displayed almost in infant years. “He was but three years old when he rambled off one day, armed with a willow wand, duly furnished with CHARACTERIZATION IN DEGREE 177 a crooked pin, to fish in a ‘wee burnie,’ of which he had taken note, away a good mile from home. Unknown to any one, already appreciating the fascination of an undisturbed and solitary ‘cast,’ the blue-eyed and golden-haired adventurer sallied forth to the water side, to spend a day of unforgotten delight, lashing away at the rippling stream.” Once of a morn- ing, now the famous Professor of Moral Philosophy, Wilson had gone out on the hills, where the clearness of the sunshine and the crispness of the air so inspirited him that he threw his hat to the winds, leaped over a boulder, and ran at top speed a dozen miles before the heat of his ecstasy was spent. One night in London, during student years, having found it necessary to chastize an insolent cabby, he set out on foot, to avoid arrest, in his dinner clothes, and covered the whole distance to Oxford, some sixty miles, and arrived as the col- lege gates were opened at five o’clock. “That slender youth, so tidily dressed in his top-boots and well-fitting coat, with face so placid, and blue eyes so mild, looking as if he never could do or say anything ouwtre or startling, can that be a pic- ture of him we have seen and heard as the long-maned and mighty, whose eyes were ‘as lightnings of fiery flame,’ and his voice like an organ bass; who laid about him, when the fit was on, like a Titan, breaking small men’s bones?” At Mag- dalen he held, in 1803, the record for the long jump, “doing twenty-three feet on a dead level, with a run and a leap on a slightly inclined plane, perhaps an inch to a yard.” This was the future maker of the Noctes, and the Lights and Shad- ows of Scottish Life, who was to turn out prodigies of copy, and win for Blackwood what seems after the lapse of a century a lasting prestige. At times, then, it is degree alone of quality that counts with us. We care little for a game or a drama played with mere correctness in kind. We brand it as mediocre, or as lacking in degree of merit. It is the batting average, or the number of men that the pitcher strikes out, or the ability of the cap- tain to break the line, that gives value to the performer and his work. It is the eminence with which Bernhardt and Irving impersonate their parts, and not their typically respectable stage work, that draws the public in hordes to the box-office. 178 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Similarly, there are forms of personality in which quality is taken for granted, and only greatness of it is considered. So, while there are many sorts and conditions of people that must be drawn with reference to kind, there are some who must be presented with reference to force of character. We know at sight, in outside life, whether a given subject is re- markable for peculiarities or for power, and we shape our oral characterizations accordingly. Authors determine similarly, by instinct, whether a character is to be presented to imagina- tion by distinctive traits, or by the singular degree of some quality which it shares with others. Hopkinson Smith’s Captain Joe is a good example of char- acterization effected, not by unusual traits, but by strength of personality. Professor Blaisdell (Composition-Rhetoric, pp. 19, 20) summarizes thus the incidents, all of them actual, which the author uses: On a morning when the North River is full of floating ice a tug plows a great furrow in the hull of a crowded ferryboat. The boat being helpless because of paddles choked with ice, the danger is increased a hundred fold. Captain Joe, seeing the accident from his own forward deck, runs his tug up to the side of the ferryboat and leaps into the crush of white-faced women, shrieking children, cursing men, and crazy, struggling horses. Driving the frightened crowd to the side opposite the ragged hole, he vows that he will throw overboard the first man that stirs, and runs for the engine-room. He meets the en- gineer halfway up the ladder, compels him to return, and immediately begins to pile mattresses, blankets, clothing, cotton waste, bits of carpet, everything, into the splintered gap left by the tug’s cutwater. But all available material has been used and the water is still pouring in. Running his eye searchingly about the engine-room and finding nothing, he deliberately thrusts his body into the yawning breach, holding himself steady with one arm outside, where the water freezes it and the floating ice gnaws off the flesh. An hour later the boat is safe in her slip, and a surgeon is caring for the unconscious man. Finally, the color creeps back to his cheeks, the eyes half open, and the surgeon catches the whisper, “Wuz any of them babies hurt ?” On a Sunday months afterwards Captain Joe is impor- tuned to tell of this experience. “He would, but he’s most CHARACTERIZATION IN DEGREE 179 forgot. So many of these things turnin’ up when a man’s bangin’ round, it’s hard to keep track on ’em. He wuz workin’ on the Reliance at the time, and come to think on it, he’d found her log last week in his old sea-chest when he wuz huntin’ some rubber cloth to patch his divin’ suit. He guessed the story wuz all there.” The book is found. Turning the grimy pages with his thole-pin of a finger, he at last finds the entry. And what is it? “January 30—Left Jersey City 7 A.M. Ice running heavy. Captain Joe stopped leak in ferryboat.” There were probably a hundred intelligent, brave, able-bodied men on the ferryboat when she was struck. None of them all, officers, passengers, or crew, saw any chance to escape. Cap- tain Joe leaps aboard because he sees a chance, and has con- ceived a plan. How is he first characterized to us? Evidently by superiority of discernment, of resourcefulness. By what right or warrant does he board the craft, and coerce the master and the engineer, as well as the crowd, to obey his orders? Clearly by sovereignty of will and insight. So he is character- ized now by a force that makes him king for the moment, since no one as yet thinks of him as a deliverer. Why does he place his own body in the breach? We read the answer in his whisper to the surgeon. It was to save the company, and especially the wondering, frightened babies in their mothers’ arms. Thus he is characterized again by his tenderness for children, and his forgetfulness of his own safety. Why did he make light of his deed? Was it pride, or modesty? Was it not rather a larger manliness, which counted an act that he could repeat indefinitely as too paltry to be discussed? So he is characterized lastly by his inability to take his performance or even his suffering seriously. Captain Joe has very properly been made what we call the “hero” of a story, because he is a hero in will and nature. A hero is a person who with high purpose achieves or attempts to achieve an ideal, a consummate feat. The goal of this hero’s endeavor was the saving of perhaps three hundred lives. He attained it, and at cost of what would have been death to a man of ordinary endurance and strength. The imaginative appeals that make us acquainted with Cap- tain Joe are thus of nobility as well as worth. That he should 180 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY have set his single strength against the forces of nature, with- out stopping to count the cost, is not less than sublime. His anxiety for the children, which seems not to have given way even in his unconscious moments, shows singular beauty of character. These appeals make us recognize the nature of the man in its superiorities, and are therefore of degree. The diagram employed in Chapter XVI (p. 161), for characteriza- tions of kind, will need to be changed but little to illustrate imaginative appeals of the new sort: The actions given us IMAGINATIVE CHARACTER DISCERNED. SPHERE OF IMAGINA- TION AND THE INTEL- LECTUAL LIFE MATERIAL SPHERE OF THE SENSES AND THE PHYSICAL LIFE by the author’s treatment make us conceive, by a backward, realizing inference, the mastery shown by Captain Joe in in- sight, will, sympathy, and manliness, as their cause. Then we are stimulated to frame the forward or synthetic inference, and to visualize idealizingly the personality. It is evident that we are each endowed with senses that take cognizance of sublime and beautiful qualities in man as well as in outside nature. Otherwise, we should not be aware of such distinctions as are here implied. These senses or ap- petencies, which we call in sum the soul, are not senses merely. They not only recognize, when beauty is present, that its de- gree is high or low, but demand that it shall be high. The same is true in our experiences of the sublime. When the degree of sublimity or beauty discovered in qualities of char- acter is high, enthusiasm is aroused. When the degree is as high as we can well conceive, we idealize the possessor, as we here idealize Captain Joe, and as all the world idealizes Lincoln. CHARACTERIZATION IN DEGREE 181 Imaginative appeals of degree are requisite for the idealization of any character. The general fondness for such degrees of noble and sublime quality as amount to heroism, largely govern in the making of imaginative literature. In fiction of the sensational sort, ex- travagant if not impossible exploits are invented to kindle the untutored imagination. In books of standard merit, extraor- dinary achievements are generally introduced, sooner or later, to exalt the principal character or characters. In The Fugitive Blacksmith, “Bill” climbs the flagstaff by a surprising device of three wire rings. In Evan Harrington, Meredith makes the title character approve himself to the heroine and to us by leaping overboard and rescuing a drunken sailor. The Countess of Cresset, in The Amazing Marriage, “was a wonderful swimmer, among other things, and one early morning, when she was a girl, she did really swim, they say, across the Shannon and back to win a bet for her brother Lord Levellier.” And this same countess is used to present the first hero of the story, by relating “the well-known tale of Captain Kirby and the shipful of mutineers; and how when not a man of them stood by him, and he in the service of the first in- surgent state of Spanish America, to save his ship from being taken over by the enemy, he blew her up, fifteen miles from land: and so got to shore swimming and floating alternately, and was called Old Sky High by English sailors, any number of whom could always be had to sail under Buccaneer Kirby.” Among the innumerable examples of characterization by de- gree, in good literature, many appear too striking to be real. This is partly due to difference of perspective. Read with lit- erary expectation, the work of a life-saving crew may seem Herculean, but, received as news, may fail to engage imagina- tion. The unnoted heroisms of life are more numerous and moving than the heroisms of romance. There is little in fiction more remarkable than reports, such as the following, which we read almost daily, and without much feeling, in the papers: Los ANGELES, CAL., July 31.—Determined that he would not be separated from his wife, who is a leper and has been confined at the County Hospital, Brigadier General David K. Wardwell, retired, veteran of two wars, has 182 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY stolen her from the institution and rushed her across the Mexican border, where he declares he will live with her until death separates them. No attempt will be made to bring them back, as the of- ficials say they both threatened to end their lives if forced to live apart. Every community has its own heroic figures, which it char- acterizes by narrating feats of strength, or daring, or endurance. Most of these stalwart natures drop from memory, as gen- erations pass, and leave no influence. The visitor who looks in from the great world outside is often surprised at the rare- ness and worth of these ungathered types. In some sleepy village he will hear the incident of the church-raising, of which Major Dudley is the hero. A part of the vast frame proving too unwieldy for the group of men assigned to handle it, the impatient leader orders everybody aside and lifts it into posi- tion without help. Or, it is perhaps a seaboard town, where our reported visitor chances to be a guest on the morning that Captain Cushing, of the coasting service, came in after the Stonington, on which he had taken passage, went down off the Cornfields. He had helped women into the boats until the ship began to lurch, when, wrenching a chair from the deck, he dropped overboard and floated with it till he worked himself ashore. The children of the home in which he told his story stood in wonder before him all day long. Again, in the country, our visitor will hear of the Puritan mother, whose summons brought her daughter posthaste from school, riding on horse- back behind her teacher. As she burst into the house with impassioned inquiry, on the assumption that some one was dead or mortally stricken, she was answered with only the stern mandate, “Put that broom back in its place.” Persons of strong or intense natures must evidently be char- acterized by means of the intensity or the strength. Eccentric people, not remarkable for largeness of personality, must be presented by appropriate appeals of kind. Sometimes we have occasion to show the smallness or feebleness of a given nature. Here also the problem is of degree, but in minus instead of plus denominations. The ideal of the defective brain is as much lower as the ideal of the heroic mind is higher than common CHARACTERIZATION IN DEGREE 183 standards. Characterization by mimicry of lisps, or slips of speech, or “bulls,” is of this sort. On the other hand, by ex- aggeration of proper degree appeals, caricature is effected. Moliére, to burlesque the title character in The Miser (II. v) merely makes him say, “I lend you,” instead of, “I give you, good day.” We should not fail to realize, in this part of our work, that, in spite of the importance, to each of us, of reading and draw- ing character correctly, we are not much helped by our teachers or others to acquire or improve the processes of either in any way. Largely in consequence of this, many English pupils as well as other people look on character as so hedged up and overlaid as to be past finding out. Every such person should ponder well the contrary truth, that even those who suppress or falsify the marks of personality cannot escape eventual be- trayal of their natures. Some folk divine such concealments from the first, and avoid the sorrows of misplaced confidence. School training in life and literature should enable all learners to read with readiness the secrets of character, which are really open to all the world. EXERCISES 1. Draw a character by use of imaginative appeals of degree. 2. Draw a character by such imaginative appeals as_ shall idealize it. 3. Report three examples, which you have chanced to hear or overhear, of oral characterization by degree. 4. Find two good examples, in current fiction, of characteriza- tion in degree. Discuss these and compare with the oral instances reported in Exercise 3 above. 5. Narrate the more considerable incidents in a recent trip or outing, and with these introduce visually some of the people met with. Of these, determine which should be presented by imagi- native appeals of kind, and which by imaginative appeals of degree. Draw and introduce these respective characters, using short, vigorous paragraphs of dialogue, at appropriate points in the narra- tion. 6. Read the opening chapters of John Muir’s Boyhood and Youth, and show how the narrative is built upon imaginative appeals of character in degree. 184 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY 7, Determine whether you should characterize Tennyson as poet and man, to those unacquainted with his work, by imaginative appeals of kind, or of degree. Make the study as suggested, and determine whether you can justify the steps and means. 8. Treat similarly the work and character of Longfellow. 9. Describe, from cut in dictionary, the stringed instrument called kit, or pochette. 10. Read the last thirteen paragraphs of Chapter XIV in The Mystery of Edwin Drood and discuss the merits of the narration and description. 11. A landlady once left on the bureau of her lodger this note: “Too many matches are used in this room. I put here ten matches, which will be the number allotted for the week.” Did the lady who told this incident of her neighbor intend characterization in kind or in degree? Explain. 12. Show what characters, at the opening of Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities are presented by imaginative appeals of degree. 13. Show what is the effect, and what Lockhart probably in- tended should be the effect, of this passage in his Life (1. 66) of Scott: Sir Walter communicated that his mother, and many others of Mrs. Sinclair’s pupils, were sent afterwards to be finished off by the Honorable Mrs. Ogilvie, a lady who trained her young friends to a style of manners which would now be considered intolerably stiff. Such was the effect of this early training upon the mind of Mrs. Scott, that even when she approached her eightieth year, she took as much care to avoid touching her chair with her back as if she had still been under the stern eye of Mrs. Ogilvie. 14. Recall a good example of oral caricature, at the expense of some one known to you, and explain its manner and occasion. 15. Select a good example of what is called “a character,” from among people that you have met, and show, by a plan or outline, how the personality could be put to use in a short story. 16. Alter the plan of the story just outlined by introducing another personage remarkable for force of character. Write out a first draft of the amended plot, and use it as a study in revision. CHAPTER XIX INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION OMETIMES authors present noble and worthy personages misleadingly, as the first step in characterization, in order to ensure for them better eventual appreciation from the reader. Many people lack the art of making a good impression, and at first repel those who afterwards become tkeir stanchest friends. Some peculiarity in appearance or manner is inter- preted as typical, and occasions a wrong conception of the personality. Lincoln, in comparison with Everett and Seward, seemed boorish and incapable. Grant was considered indolent, and irresolute, and failed in every business venture. Marshall Field is spoken of as having served his apprenticeship as clerk in a country store, and been pronounced by his employer wholly unfitted for the career of a tradesman. In many cases of this kind, it is safe and wise to present the character in hand positively, by direct imaginative appeals, and compel the most favorable conception possible of the person- ality. All the world knows that faults will be found in every nature. Let these come out, when they must, after the char- acter has been grasped in essential traits. The leading pulpit orator of the last century should be characterized by his un- usual brilliancy and strength, and afterwards the fact that he defended the use of a knife in lieu of fork at table may be conceded, if it must be told, without much risk of overthrow- ing the eminence of the man. But the sympathies of people are so fickle and illogical that it is sometimes unsafe to employ the method of positive or direct appeals. Some fault or weakness may be discovered in a wrong perspective, and the whole character thrown into per- manent distortion. A young man, supposed of consummate breeding, lost the respect of his circle because he was seen to moisten his thumb in turning the leaves of a costly book. As a matter of fact, the movement was due wholly to embarrass- 185 186 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY ment, and was recognized upon the instant by the doer as an act that belied his nature. But it was interpreted by his friends as a betrayal of his actual tastes and rearing, and as proof that he was no better than a pretender. So imagination in correcting its first conceptions of his character, now thought false, went far in its reaction beyond the proper point in a contrary estimation of his worth. This is its usual behavior in such cases. : Action and reaction, outside the sphere of physics, are never equal. In matters involving imagination, reaction may be vastly greater. Illustrations are numberless, and may be con- stantly observed. The story of the countess whose salon de- serted her, is a drastic instance. The home of this lady was a center of wit and fashion. To her accomplishments were added rare beauty and fascinating manners. All the world admired and worshipped. But, at a brilliant function, she was detected wearing a purloined and altered necklace, and was later proved to have been, from early years, what was called in charity a kleptomaniac. The circle which melted away had lifted her, in imagina- Cc D co RE ESB LT ET ES ES EE H tion, to the highest plane (cD) of refinement, far above the level (AB) of their own living. They now, from the new imagi- native appeal, lowered their conception of her nature to the INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION 187 standard (cp) of such as live without ideals. This was in- evitable and just. But they did not stop with that. They visualized her as in fact degraded to the rank (EF) of depravity and even brutishness. Here the line GH, between CD and EF, represents the excess of reaction over the normal action of imagination. It is legiti- € H P NTE IES RE TE ES SEE AS TE PLANE OF IDEALIZATION Le] c G INTELLECTUAL LIFE PLANE OF COMMON LIFE ™ = ma mate to utilize this reactional element, provided the eventual notion is not unduly idealized or degraded. It is sometimes difficult to forestall even farcical exaggera- tions, when imagination by accident or design has been mis- led, in correcting conceptions of character. A young lady of social prominence, in an Eastern city, scandalized her circle by marrying the family chauffeur. Intimate friends of this lady, 188 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY who was accomplished, and had seemed of exclusive and artistic tastes, maintained stoutly that she had been hypnotized ; and the chauffeur, in common opinion, was regarded as little better than a criminal. Here, the popular imagination, which had envisaged the con- sciousness of the young lady as belonging to a plane (cD) above the grade (AB) of common living, reduced its estimate of her character not only to the level (cD) of folk devoid of self-respect, but as low as to the rank (EF) of the perverse and even profligate. Thus far the example is not different, psychologically, from the preceding. But it turned out that the chauffeur was of as good family as his employer’s, was possessed of gifts amounting to genius as a painter, and had come to the city to acquire means of prosecuting his studies, and of gaining access in un- employed periods to the collections and galleries of art. These facts had been discovered accidentally by the young lady, who encouraged his bent, and, after assuring herself of his abilities, made proffer, being an heiress in her own right, of money sufficient to complete his training. This assistance, however, the artist had been too proud to accept. The opposition of the family to their daughter’s interest in a chauffeur was fore- known, and brought the issue of her marrying the man of talents, and repairing with him to Paris, where he quickly won distinction. The young husband was now more esteemed by the family and lionized by their circle than if he had been a notable suitor from the first. His bride was approved as having made a wise and noble choice, and their union seemed invested ever after with a halo of romance. This means simply that the popular imagination not only restored her to the plane (cD) of the intellectual life, but also exalted her, as also her lover, to the level (EF) of idealization. This is a matter that invites study. All of us are liable to similarly extreme shifts of sentiment and opinion. Evidently the proper range of imaginative inference would have been from CD to CD, along the line Gc, and back again. The nature of the lady remained, throughout the affair, unaltered. What was changed was only the public judgment and conception of it. Her unconventional and daring conduct was considered INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION 189 due, as experience had shown such conduct is well nigh always due, to giddiness and lack of self-respect. If the lady’s action had not had the warrant of rare insight, the outcome would have been disastrous. But she saw true, and had force of char- acter enough to keep her lover’s respect, and to inspire him to his best efforts. Because the public found itself befooled, now discovering strength where it had inferred there was only weakness, it gave up trying to form an exact judgment, and took on faith, blindly, not the whole behavior but the whole character as well. It gave her back not only what it had taken from her, but credited her with every sort of excellence imagi- nable, and invested her, for degree, with sovereignty of nature, out of which heroisms are bred. The extent of spiritualization may be represented in thought by the line cu. Instances farther removed from the glamour of art and social prestige may be helpfully considered. A young pro- fessor of surgery was summoned from his lecture-hall and hur- ried away by special train, to save the life of a man, hurt by an explosion, in a neighboring city. Operatives and their families, at least two thousand men and women, were massed bareheaded in front of the manufactory, on his arrival. Under the shadow of trees without, the surgeon stopped and examined the injuries of the unconscious man. Rising, after a moment of inspection, he astonished everybody by inquiring, “Who pays for this service?” The crowd hissed and howled, but he sternly refused to proceed until his fee, one hundred dollars, was paid into his hands. After the intricate dressing of the wounds was finished, the professor of surgery handed the money over to a responsible bystander, explaining that he had despaired of success from the first except with the aid of expert nursing, and that, fearing neglect after the outburst of sympathy had spent itself, he had felt it necessary to exact on the spot a con- tribution large enough to carry the patient jthrough. When the crowd knew that the physician had gone back to his train without the money, they no longer wished to mob him for what they had supposed was his shameless greed. But they did not stop with restoring him to the place he had held, before the incident, in their thought. He was then only the first sur- geon in the state. He was now, to them, an epic figure, an 199 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY object of reverence and wonder, and associated in their minds with the heroes of romance. Those of them who are still living are not done with the story, after fifty years, of the Yale professor who cowed and duped an angry mob, and raised a purse for the hurt mill-hand. Even this is hardly a fair illustration of what happens when we attempt, unadvisedly, to mend the mistakes of imagination. The most cultivated and conservative people behave thus in no respect more wisely than factory crowds. When Dwight L. Moody received his invitation to visit a certain Eastern city, he was bitterly opposed by prominent members of an old historic church, chief in wealth and influence in it and in the state. They protested publicly against the scandal of dignifying with the slightest recognition a man so blatantly vulgar and illiterate as they believed he was. Yet when Mr. Moody came, they did not refrain from going out to see and hear, and con- firm their prejudices. But the imaginative inference that they had drawn concerning him turned out to be wrong. In at- tempting to revise it they lost their heads. The ladies of their circle, who were never seen in public places except under the most select and distinguished auspices, spent the greater part of their time at the meetings. They brought lunches to the afternoon gatherings, and stayed over, in order to be sure of good seats for the evening service, in the rough, unpainted building. Their husbands, whose doors were scrupulously shut against parvenus and other folk not of their circle, pestered the man with absurd attentions. They forced him to leave his hotel, and make his stay in one of their patrician houses. They persisted in having the family coach of some member call for him and leave him at the tabernacle doors, in spite of the fact that he wished to walk for exercise. The thing was the talk of the town, the wonder of the elect and the profane together. They importuned him to take up his residence in their city, and offered to endow some one of their institutions with a foundation to that end. On his evasive explanation that he preferred retiring eventually to some farm, they proposed im- mediately and insistently that he should accompany them on a tour of the environs, to select the land. In discussing at a church service, a little later, the characteristics of the man, it INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION 191 was explained that his much-decried illiteracy was really con- fined to the use of singular verbs with plural subjects, and the substitution of “done” for “did,” with occasionally a double negative. “But these things,” the cultured spokesman was ap- proved in saying, “we didn’t mind at all, for in fact we found the flavor that they lent to his style delightful.” These domi- nators, it must be borne in mind, were not new-fledged men of affairs, but sons and grandsons of founders of great busi- ness houses, liberally educated, much-traveled, connoisseurs in art, and sticklers for the most stereotyped and exclusive social forms. Had Moody come into their knowledge in any ordinary way, he would have been excluded, as a matter of course, from the pulpit of their “ancient church.” Moreover, his illiteracy of the double negative, of “done” for “did,” and of plural construction with singular verbs, would not have seemed dif- ferent from anybody’s illiteracy, and in no case could have been looked upon in the light of an almost covetable accom- plishment or elegance of speech. In the instances now considered, the whole conduct of imagi- nation was undirected and undesigned. None of the persons concerned foresaw in any case the issue, or was in the least aware that a reversal of sentiment was possible. Yet the law of imaginative reaction is constantly used, in outside life, with intention and knowledge, and out of such instances the mode has made its way upward into literary art. It is a trick of singers, of a certain class, to fumble at a high or low note well within their range, thus making their audiences believe that they cannot attain it, only to take it with clearness and cer- titude at the close. Unprincipled platform speakers, after elab- orating their efforts, often feign lack of preparation, from the desire to seem possessed of supreme abilities. Persons in- sensible to the risk, sometimes make grievous trouble by arous- ing, in the minds of friends or others, too high expectations of strangers before acquaintance with them is possible. Gough tells somewhere how he was presented to his first London audience, by a blunderer of this kind, as the greatest orator of the times. Realizing what would become of his reputation if he tried to fulfill the promise of the moderator, Gough ad- vanced to the front of the stage, stammered, spoke broken 192 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY sentences, patched them, descended to twaddle, and grew even in that obscure. In a few minutes he had succeeded in en- forcing the inference that he was a thorough-going American humbug. When he had made every one begin to realize what an hour and a half of that sort of entertainment was sure to mean, he proceeded to reform his style and manner, and dis- abuse his victims. He soon made them synthesize over again, and to contrary effect, his abilities as an orator, and at the end carried the audience by storm. He so far achieved his pur- pose as to send the major part of his hearers away persuaded that the assertion with which his lecture was prefaced was but a dispassionate and conservative judgment after all. Had Gough been introduced in the usual manner, he would have been estimated by the standards of his class. As it was, he man- aged to get himself judged by a standard vastly lower,—the standard in fact of failure. Not ineptly has the mother wit of the race proposed to call the outcome in such cases an “agree- able disappointment.” Imaginative reactions are often utilized, in common life, with more permanent effect. The success of the young rail- road agent, who aspired to the hand of a brilliant and high- bred authoress, is a notable illustration. Amused at her im- perious manner and the disdain with which she regarded the young men of the mountain village, her summer home, he de- vised a stratagem and bided the time when she should enter the supply store which, with other departments of the com- pany’s affairs, was under his general control. Seizing the chance to attend upon her by displacing the clerk in waiting he ironically ridiculed her pretensions, representing himself as having made, while serving a term in the penitentiary, the ar- ticle of dress which she had come to purchase. Within a month, to the astonishment of everybody, she married him. Men of superior gifts, and including an author of national fame, had not succeeded in becoming suitors. A born social leader, fit to grace any mansion in the land, and aspiring to position equal to the highest, she was content to live obscurely, and ever looked upon her husband as the most remarkable of living men. And she was wrong only in degree. Unschooled in the lore of books, he yet knew human values and the laws INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION 193 of the mind. His only chance lay, as he had divined, in letting the proud lady see that he was not of those, on the plane AaB of our diagram, who accepted her notion of her own impor- tance, and also in making her judge herself by the standards of one whom she instantly invested with the halo of a master. No later manifestation of his nature gave this artistic and exacting wife occasion to reduce the largeness (GH) of her idealization. The mode of imaginative reaction may be called, in con- trast with the direct method of the last chapters, the Indirect Manner. We will consider some examples of it, under this name, in literary forms. Because Shakespeare understood human values and the laws of the mind better than any known man besides, he has effected by it clearer and more compelling characterizations than any other author. He makes Iago and Roderigo, at the opening of Othello, represent the title char- acter as black, thick-lipped, and old, and as belonging to the class of low adventurers. With this Moor of alien and doubt- ful history a patrician lady from one of the richest palaces in Venice has eloped. We do not care to become acquainted with people who manage their love affairs at such a level. Much less do we consider ourselves capable of being interested when the leader in the business is of an inferior and alien race. If a blackamoor had carried off a rich man’s daughter from some mansion in our city, we should expect him at least to go into hiding, and wince at the first glance from an honest eye. The first scene is devoted essentially to subtle and degrading imaginative appeals, which seem to prove Othello one of the most despicable of men. Now Shakespeare begins the task of undoing our first conception, and of making the Moor a hero. Our first sight of the man, as he stands loftily above Iago, to whose report he scarcely listens, shows us there has been a mistake. Why, he has the thin lips and flashing eye of the Arab type, and the mien of open mastery. He speaks of his marriage with Desdemona not as a triumph, but as a sacrifice to his affection, and at lago’s suggestion that he retreat from sight, replies proudly, “Not I, I must be found.’ Soon comes the half-crazed Brabantio, father of the bride, with officers of the law. With hand uplifted, Othello calls upon them to 194 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY “stand there,” and they stand indeed, not well knowing why. At Brabantio’s order, “Down with him,” which means that he should be thrown to the ground and pinioned, he humorously suggests to the posse, with a man’s contempt for child’s play, that they put up their swords lest the dew rust them. On Brabantio’s more formal order to his followers that they arrest him, “subdue him at his peril,” he bids them “hold their hands,” and all obey. Under pseudo-guard, he leads the way to the council, where, after hearing his story, the Doge admits that he should expect his own daughter to be won by the recital. The lofty dignity of his diction argues a noble nature, and we not only accept him as the hero of the play before us, but admit him to our personal gallery of epic figures. lIago’s machinations and their fruitage follow. Othello dies grandly, a victim not of the gods or of fate, but of duplicity and false- hood, yet takes his place perhaps not more doubtfully charac- tered than any other hero in the great tragedies of lit- erature. Looking now at the sources from which Shakespeare drew, we find no warrant for the indirect manner here employed. “The Moor was of great courage and of handsome person, and was very dear to the seigniors of the council. It chanced that a worthy lady of great beauty, named Desdemona, became enamored of.the Moor, because of his valor, and he, van- quished by her beauty and the nobility of her character, re- turned her love. . . . Though the parents of Desdemona did what they could to induce her to take a different husband, she and the Moor were wedded, and lived in harmony and peace in Venice.” These are the materials which Shakespeare uses, or misuses, in the first scene. He allows Macbeth to appear in his full strength, as also Hamlet, and Coriolanus, and Lear, and King Henry Fifth, at the opening of each respective play. Why is Othello robbed thus of his? No one speaks ill of him, or thinks ill of him, apparently, in all Venice. Why are char- acters created who malign him? Why is it intimated to us, through Roderigo, that he is not a Moor, but a negro? Why is added the dreadful suggestion of the drugs? No Brabantio in the original mentions any. And what finally is the need of INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION 195 depriving the good man so named, as he retires to his palace,— abounding doubtless in renaissance paintings, and curios, and Greek manuscripts,—and dies of a broken heart, wholly of our sympathy? As we ask ourselves these questions, it grows clear that the author would have failed, here, by literal treat- ment, not only of being Shakespeare, but even of making a successful play. Macaulay pronounces Othello the chief example of literary art. It would seem that the honor belongs rather to Antony and Cleopatra. In this play Shakespeare takes two historic figures notorious for profligacy, and makes them hero and heroine in defiance of our prejudices and our antagonism to the task proposed. He begins his study by exhibiting both title characters as worse than imagined, Cleopatra incredibly wilful and exacting, and Antony dancing attendance upon her and shamelessly obedient to her lightest whim. ‘The first scene is thus devoted, as we should expect, to the degradation of each nature. In the second scene, Antony is made to redeem him- self swiftly and grandly, and by the end of the first act Cleo- patra has been shown great in nature and wrong only from environment. Antony is a paragon of generosity, but the age needs a harder master, and fate chooses the cold, self-seeking Octavius instead. Cleopatra emancipates herself at last from her self-love, and as she loses her life in the supreme renun- ciation, finds it in epic greatness. A little penetrating study makes clear how Shakespeare has done for these characters, with us, what he could not have done in our sympathies for a living pair. In Julius Cesar we see one of the world’s masters dealt with more boldly, and yet more effectively, by the indirect method of characterization. The indirect manner was not a common expedient before Shakespeare, nor was it revived till near the beginning of the last century. Dramatists have employed it oftener and perhaps better than other portrayers of character and manners. Many authors in modern literature seem never to have noted instances of it in outside life, and lack the instinct to treat unattractive subjects by it, or to use it when there is race prejudice to over- come. It was attempted, but ignorantly and ineffectually, by George Eliot in Daniel Deronda. Longfellow seems not to 196 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY have been aware of the strength it offered for the presenta- tion of the hero in Hiawatha. On the other hand, Browning employs it exquisitely in engaging our sympathy for Djabal, in The Return of the Druses, as also in developing the title char- acter of his Luria. Tennyson covers some use of it in The Princess by calling the whole work A Medley. Among recent studies, The Divine Fire is conspicuous for its successful char- acterization of a cockney hero by this means. Anne Douglas Sedgwick uses it prominently in Francis Winslow Kane and A Fountain Sealed. In The Beloved Vagabond, this method is twice employed. Kipling’s Second Rate Woman illustrates the mode in the short story. It behooves us to study the indirect manner, not only that we may appreciate the art of our best literature, but especially that we may dissociate ourselves from the great crazes of the times. When we comprehend the law of imaginative reaction, we uncover the secret of the many shifts of sentiment that characterize our national history for the last half century. After 1865, the type of great American changed from Wash- ington to Lincoln. What were the grounds for this change of our democratic ideals? Was it not primarily because we had assumed that the first man of the country must have family, or training, or prestige? Was it not also because nothing was at first expected of this man from the people, and then because he surpassed all expectations conceived of other public men? Supposed uneducated, he seemed in the end more educated than Everett, the finished scholar. Supposed a failure as a statesman, a politician, he seemed the greatest of living states- men, or masters of politics. Supposed unread, unlettered, he gave forth hurried, unconsidered utterances which are ac- counted classic in the whole English-speaking world. Low- born, and supposed ignoble, he has been pronounced by a titled publicist the greatest man of the modern age. Supposed un- christian, irreligious, he has been adjudged by a bishop the most religious and Christian of mankind since Paul. Mani- festly there is exaggeration here. But who of us is free from the spell of his life and name? Yet who of us is released from the duty of thinking soundly and judging justly? A professor of American history recently affirmed that the INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION 197 altruistic spirit of the North, which carried through the war of 1861-1865 against the South, was engendered by the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of Mrs. Stowe. So far as this is true, is it not due to the imaginative reaction occasioned by that rather ordi- nary novel, and by other books, such as Neighbor Jackwood, which followed? It had suited the business interests of the North to hold to the belief that the Southern negro was little better than a brute. Mrs. Stowe seemed to demonstrate that he might be instead a saint, and slavery ceased. In 1859, John Brown was executed with the general approval of the North. Four years later, a million soldiers were singing John Brown's Body as a battle hymn. To-day perhaps a majority of the sons and grandsons of those soldiers are convinced that the war in which they fought was a mistake, and that the victory which they won failed of its purpose to elevate the negro. Still more remarkable is the imaginative reaction that carried the presidential campaign of 1892, as followed by the similar craze of 1896. For more than a generation, the outcome of our national elections severally has been determined by men who shift their politics. Various Mark Antonys of the press or of the platform seem, to-day, regardless of national right or honor, to arrogate to themselves the function of creating and controlling the sentiments of the country, even to the extent of making peace or war at any cost. We should note also how the popular imagination, undi- rected, is ceaselessly revising its judgment of public figures. It lionizes some leader, lifts him to the level of idealization, then ignores him or even forgets that he exists. The chief naval hero of our war with Spain, for his single error of judgment, has place no longer in public thought. In our respective per- sonal circles, we alter our notions of friends almost from day to day, and suffer like revaluations from them. ‘The age is slowly learning to be less hasty in framing its conceptions, and more conservative in amending them. We can assist by striv- ing to be more openly true to our convictions, that we may not be too readily misjudged. Our friends and others do not stop revising their judgments, while we take our words and acts unseriously, of our worth. In making use of the indirect manner, each writer should 198 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY conform to the prejudices or prepossessions of the reader that he addresses. Indeed, if he knows his power, he may imitate Shakespeare and intensify them. He must then find such true and final imaginative appeals as will establish the character in hand beyond all question. Every sort of nature can be exhibited by the indirect manner through portrayal first of its weaker side. But any use of the mode that is disproportionate to oral usage, or that is not in accord with the instincts of the general mind, will fail of good effect. The springs of art lie in deep seeing. There are reserves in every personality which, uncovered, will control the sympathies of all the world. The character of Jack Falstaff seems still, in spite of progress through three centuries in taste and morals, neither repellant nor intolerable to the most refined imagination. EXERCISES 1. Recall to mind some acquaintance that you at first misunder- stood and misprized, but afterwards found ideal. Make with this, covering name and incidents from identification, an example of direct, and then of indirect characterization. 2. Analyze and report, in a written appreciation, the steps and means by which Mark Antony, in Shakespeare’s Julius Cesar, changed the “citizens” who idolized Brutus, into a mob that sought his life. 3. Bring back to mind the example of some official or other townsman whom your public at first disliked, but afterwards idealized. Narrate the incidents and shape the whole into a literary illustration of the present topic. 4. Study with care the first three scenes of Shakespeare’s Othello, and make a written summary of the manner in which the author presents the character of Desdemona. 5. Recall, from recent reading, some example of a short story in which the leading personage or some other character is handled in the indirect manner. 6. Recall from memory two instances in which just and effec- tive presentation of character cannot be accomplished by direct means. Outline for each the steps and imaginative appeals proper for characterization by the manner of indirection. 7. Test whether there is visual effect in the following paragraph, and explain its psychology: INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION 199 A New England lady was always insistent that her cup of tea should be brought in steaming hot. Yet the benefit from the unusual heat seemed to reside in the comfort solely of knowing that the cup was by, ready to be lifted at any moment. For this lady never tasted its contents till her meal was finished, and the tea was cold. 8. Make, or recall from life, an instance similar, and explain its visual quality. 9g. By examples, show how imaginative appeals characterizing men differ from such as indicate the character, generically, of women. 10. Describe, from cut in Standard Dictionary, the taj of a Mohammedan dervish. 11. Analyze and present a written appreciation of the character work in May Sinclair’s The Divine Fire, or in some more recent example of the same manner. CHAPTER XX MOODS AND EMOTIONS ITERARY composition includes the presentation of emo- tion as well as character. Moods and states of feeling must be communicated, like character, by signs. It is not more artistic to declare one’s emotions than one’s nature, and is even more difficult and ineffectual. We cannot convey knowledge of either sort, but must stimulate our reader, by imaginative appeals, to infer it and realize it for himself. The imaginative appeals that indicate states of feeling or emotion are similar to those that reveal character. The crying of a child serves as an imaginative appeal of pain. A roar of laughter imports that a company of people is oppressed by humor. A blush betrays a state of embarrassment or shame. Clutching at the wall is the proof of sudden distress. Our race has from the earliest times been gifted in the use of this sign language of imagination. When our forefathers, centuries ago, wished to signify the rage of god Thor, they represented him as grasping the handle of his hammer with such energy that his knuckles turned white. They might have said that he waxed upon occasion immeasurably angry. But that would not have been made god Thor visually personal to the children or the grown-up folk of ancient time. The only effective manner of presenting emotion, whether man’s or Thor’s, is to show such manifestations of it as we have seen or can imagine to have been our own. The most common and familiar signs of emotion are seen in the changes of facial expression. We know what fire in the eye means, or the touch of color, clenching of hands, or hard- ening or relaxing of the muscles about the mouth. There are besides numberless gestures and other movements indicative or mood or feeling, some of them often seen, and some not often or ever observed before. These we confidently, as a rule, refer to the feelings or emotions that respectively inspire 200 MOODS AND EMOTIONS 201 them. The mind seldom continues long in the same frame, and the body chameleon-like makes registry, by larger or slighter reactions, of each change. These together make up a system of signs which all men and women learn almost as early as their mother tongue. Literature here as in other matters follows life, and uses these signs at second hand as best it may. The following are everyday illustrations of how we set forth such signs and leave the hearer or reader in each case to interpret what they mean : The mother sat drawing her finger along the table, and did not look up. While the witness was on the stand, he was brushing away imaginary flies from his face. The little urchin, about to meet a group of girls, shut his eyes and walked on blindly, while the girls laughed and shouted. He received us apparently without the least embarrass- ment. But I noticed that he was trying to read his paper upside down when we came in. After she came home from her husband’s funeral, before she removed her hat, she was seen to take off her wedding ring, and toss it into a bureau drawer. She always jokes with Fred, when he and Hal come to call, but she doesn’t say much to Hal. So Hal thinks she doesn’t like him. But she always asks Hal to stay. It is interesting to watch the faces of the men in my night-school class. One of these men keeps his eyes so fastened on me as to lose no single word or movement, and seems not even indeed to wink, as I explain the work, Another nods violently now and then, but rouses himself quickly, and appears to recover the sentence partly lost. Another takes in everything, without effort, that I say, and seems to watch its effect upon the class more than he watches me. Another eyes me personally, pays no atten- tion to my teaching, and refuses altogether to recite. We note that these examples, like imaginative appeals of character occasion visual activity in our thought. We may call them Imaginative Appeals of Mood. They range, of 202 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY course, from simple and ordinary frames of mind to states of excitement and outbursts of passion. Also, as with ap- peals of character, we may assist interpretation by recognizing signs of emotion as of kind or of degree. When we see some one smile or exhibit levity in a home of sorrow, we are shocked at the kind of feeling shown. If we come upon some one prostrate from pain, we are interested first to know the cause of suffering, that is, the kind of sensation or feeling. The illustrations just considered are of kind. But more frequently it is the degree of sentiment or emotion that arouses interest and supplies the motive for recital. We often chance upon striking examples in the papers: As the reading progressed, a red hue overspread his face, and at the words “charge the said Davis with wilful and deliberate murder,” he swallowed convulsively and wetted his lips. Mr. Ismay testified to the Senate Committee in whispers. He was more nervous than at the forenoon session, con- stantly pulling his moustache, pinching his throat or rub- bing his head. I have seen a man, who thought he was doomed to blind- ness, have the bandage taken off his eyes after an opera- tion, and cry out, “I can see,” fall on his knees before the physician, and kiss his hand and his clothes, and fairly exhaust himself in an ecstasy of feeling. The following is a newspaper report of the incident in which two young men offered themselves to be bitten by the mosquito that carries the germ of yellow fever. One of the soldiers, both of whom took the fever, did not recover. When all was ready, Doctor Reed was told that two men wished to see him. They were two young privates from the regiment stationed at Havana. Both were from Ohio. Their names were John R. Kissinger and John J. Moran. They had heard of the intended experiments, and wished to offer themselves for the purpose. Doctor Reed ex- plained fully the suffering and danger they would have to endure, but they were not daunted. Then he spoke of the money reward, but both men promptly declined it. They said that they had volunteered for humanity’s sake, and they made it a condition that they should not be paid. MOODS AND EMOTIONS 2038 Doctor Reed, greatly moved, touched his cap to them. “Gentlemen, I salute you,” he said. “In my opinion,” he has since remarked, “this exhibition of courage has never been surpassed in the history of the United States army.” Turning now to literature, we shall find excellent examples in almost every author. These are from Dickens: The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street where it was spilled. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so be- smirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a night-cap than in it, smeared upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees—BLOOD! And when one of them told the others about it, they put their hands in their pockets, and quite doubled them- selves up with laughter, and went stamping about the pave- ment of the hall. When I made my proposal, she did me the honor to be so overshadowed with a species of Awe, as to be able to articulate only the two words, “O Thou!” meaning myself. Poor Mr. Jellyby, who very seldom spoke, and almost always sat, when he was at home, with his head against the wall. Here is a notable example, from Arnold Bennett’s Clay- hanger, which for some reason the author has thought well to explain to us in advance: When the barometer of Darius’s temper was falling rap- idly, there was a sign: a small spot midway on the bridge of his nose turned ivory-white. The following, from Chesterton’s Man Who Was Thursday (p. 9), shows better art: “T beg your pardon,” said Syme grimly, “I forgot that we had abolished all conventions.” For the first time a red patch appeared on Gregory’s forehead. “You don’t expect me,” he said, “to revolutionize society upon this lawn.” me 204 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Many illustrations are met with in books of biography and history. Carlyle’s paragraph on the execution of Charlotte Corday will serve in place of various examples here: On this same evening therefore, about half-past seven o'clock, from the gate of the Conciergerie, to a city all on tiptoe, the fatal cart issues; seated on it a fair young crea- ture, sheeted in red smock of murderess; so beautiful, serene, so full of life; journeying towards death,—alone amid the world. Many take off their hats, saluting rever- ently; for what heart but must be touched? Others growl and howl. Adam Lux, of Mentz, declares that she is greater than Brutus; that it were beautiful to die with her: the head of this young man seems turned. At the Place de la Révolution, the countenance of Charlotte wears the same smile. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; she resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation, she submits with a cheerful apology. As the last act, all being now ready, they take the necker- chief from her neck; a blush of maidenly shame over- spreads that fair face and neck; the cheeks were still tinged with it when the executioner lifted the severed head to show it to the people. “It is most true,” said Fors- ter, “that he struck the cheek insultingly; for I saw it with my eyes: the Police imprisoned him for it.” There was small need to add saluting “reverently,” or that the blush was the blush of modesty, or that the executioner struck the cheek “insultingly,” to the story. True art excludes all asides and glosses. ‘Turgenev, master of masters, best shows this: The old man crimsoned to his ears, and with a sidelong look at Liza, hurriedly went from the room. He was shaking all over from side to side, and showing his teeth like a wild boar. I snatched up my gun and took to my heels. It is needless to say that the Ozhgins’s doors were at once closed to me. Kirilla Mateveitch even sent me back a bit of pencil I had left at his house. On the floor of the garret, in a whirl of dust and rub- bish, a blackish gray mass was moving to and fro with rapid ungainly action, at one moment shaking the remain- MOODS AND EMOTIONS 205 ing chimney, then tearing up the boarding and flinging it down below, then clutching at the very rafters. It was Harlov. The bitter wind was blowing upon him from every side, lifting his matted locks. It was horrible to hear his wild husky muttering. The old village priest, whom I knew, was standing bareheaded, on the steps of the other house, and holding a brazen cross in both hands, from time to time, silently and hopelessly, raised it, and, as it were, showed it to Harlov. Beside the priest stood Evlampia with her back against the wall, gazing fixedly at her father. Anna, at one moment, pushed her head out of the little window, then vanished, then hurried into the yard, then went back into the house. Sletkin—pale all over, livid—in an old dressing gown and smoking cap, with a single-barrelled rifle in his hands, kept running to and fro with little steps. He was grasping, threatening, shaking, pointing the gun at Harlov, then letting it drop back on his shoulder—pointing it again, shrieking, weeping .. . On seeing Souvenit and me he simply flew to us. “Look, look, what is going on here!” he wailed—“look ! He’s gone out of his mind . . . and see what he’s doing! I’ve sent for the police already—but no one comes! If I do fire at him, the law couldn’t touch me, for every man has a right to defend his own property! And I will fire!” He ran off towards the house. “Martin Petrovitch, look out! If you don’t get down, Vl fire!” “Fire away!” came a husky voice from the roof. “Fire away! And meanwhile here’s a little present for you!” A long plank flew up, and, turning over twice in the air, came violently to the earth, just at Sletkin’s feet. He positively jumped into the air, while Harlov chuckled. —A Lear of the Steppes, xxvi. Interest is often engaged by imaginative appeals that indi- cate some common emotion of a group or class. These cor- respond to the appeals used (p. 173) to effect class characteri- zation. Bram Stoker writes thus of Henry Irving’s farewell visits in Wales: The last night at Cardiff was a touching farewell. This was repeated at Swansea with a strange addition: when the play was over and the calls finished the audience sat still in their places and seemingly with one impulse be- gan to sing. They are all part-singers in those regions, and it was a strange and touching effect when the strains 206 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY of Newman’s beautiful hymn, “Lead, kindly light,” filled the theatre. The following is part of an Associated Press dispatch, from New York, bearing the date of August 5, 1914: The French liner Lorraine sailed to-day on a tide of tears. Aboard her were 2,000 French reservists. They answered the call to the tricolor. They sailed away, per- haps to death, following a pathetic leave-taking of their friends and dear ones. Splendidly dressed women who had come to bid saloon passengers Godspeed broke down, em- braced the sturdy soldiers of the reservist corps and com- forted the sobbing of the men with their kisses. Strong men crouched on the deck, their heads in their hands as they were bowed in prayer and tears. Just be- fore the vessel cleared her docks, someone started the Marseillaise. The departing ones took up the thrilling refrain in a chorus that swelled out over the docks. Such appeals of mood as can be made to do duty in reported and literary forms are fairly represented in the examples now considered. Incapable of such employment is of course the infinitely various and subtle gesticulation of dentonstrative folk, which cannot be reproduced except by imitation. Beyond this, and far from the reach of makers of literature, there is an inadvertent sign language of moods, unintelligible to com- mon eyes, but full of meaning to the expert observer: The antiquary asks a hundred francs for a piece of china upon which, an air of unqualified generosity, you offer him the half. He puts on a mournful expression as if he had not tasted food for days and says that he refused double that sum only an hour ago—it is but owing to his esteem for you which makes him lower his price. Where- upon you turn upon your heel; and be careful, O novice, that the craving for the china bowl does not show in the curve of your neck: the Italian dealer, even while most absorbed in the contemplation of his finger-tips or the cobwebs on his rafters has the eye of a lynx. One of the last refinements of literature is the communica- tion of lighter moods, or rather states of consciousness, that put us strangely into sympathy with the characters concerned. There are many masters in this manner: MOODS AND EMOTIONS 207 The old man made no answer, but took the parcel of tea and sugar with both hands. And both the sisters bowed, Anna from the waist, Evlampia simply with a motion of the head. Sergei Petrovitch applied a corner of the handkerchief first to one and then to the other eye. He remained unseeing, almost unwinking, while the panorama of beauty was poured out, by the beautiful can- vasser, before him. There was always a tear in her left eye, on the strength of which Kalliopa Karlovna considered herself a woman of great sensibility. Christina was silent. She stretched out her bare arm and looked at it a moment absently, turning it so as to see—or almost to see—the dimple in her elbow. Consciousness signs, as these delicate appeals to imagination may be called, mark states of consciousness in which action and feeling are virtually unaroused, and the soul forces seem at their lowest ebb. It is in these that we come closest to each other, and personality is most clearly differentiated. Appeals of mood in general tend to inspire in the mind conceptions of individual nature, and are often used in substitution for imagi- native appeals of character. EXERCISES 1. Report from observation, in writing, two strong examples illustrating Imaginative Appeals of Mood. 2. Determine whether these illustrations are of kind or of degree, and report similarly two others of the contrary sort. 3. Bring in and discuss, from your reading, two examples of feeling or emotion as indicated by signs. Show how their effectiveness is modified by adding an interpretation of these signs. 4. Show by what moods the play of Othello, in the second scene of the first act, proceeds. 5. Write your appreciation and judgments of Irvine’s My Lady of the Chimney Corner. 6. Find, and compare with this, a history or story similar. 7. Write, from personal observation or knowledge, a sketch based upon, or involving largely, imaginative appeals of mood. CHAPTER XXI SUBSTANCE AND ORIGINALITY ie we watch the speech of those who converse acceptably, we shall note that they are careful to avoid saying things that are merely obvious. They aim generally indeed at something higher, that is, the expression of ideas that are untrite or new. If all men had the same ideas, there could scarcely be a mo- tive for sustained or entertaining conversation. But almost all people have clear notions concerning matters on which some of their fellows are not so clear. I see with great confidence what I ought to do. I am likely to see with greater confidence what my neighbor ought to do. He undoubtedly sees with equal conviction that certain of my designs are improvident or unwise. Thus we may easily find occasion to exchange our views. This neighbor of mine, let us suppose, tells a group of friends that he proposes to use all his fluid capital, say $100,000, in building a larger and more costly home. It is at once recog- nized that his children, now almost grown, furnish no pre- sumable motive for the change. It thus seems clear to most of the company that he should be content with a less pre- tentious house, and keep some of this capital permanently in- vested. One of the number says this, in the discussion that follows, to the others, and all apparently, including the neigh- bor concerned, accept the idea, and are ready, with it, to close the case. But one member of the group, who has not spoken before, now explains that he has a somewhat different notion from either of those considered. “For men in your circumstances,” he says to the neighbor, “and in mine, would it not be wiser to build a block of houses, thus investing the whole sum, and producing homes that are select and attractive, you living in 208 SUBSTANCE AND ORIGINALITY 209 one yourself? You distribute the cost of your own house among the other divisions of the block, live virtually rent- free, and keep most of the capital invested interest-bearing.” To this the whole company, dropping out of mind the idea that had been just before approved, assent, and, after a little silence, pass to another topic. It is from differences of penetration and judgment, like these, that ordinary conversations are supplied. When we converse acceptably, we either say something, of fact or thought, that our hearers do not know, or we help make them clearer and more confident on matters of fact or thought that they know in part. If we fail to do either of these things, and express meanings only that go without saying, our society will not be greatly prized. On the contrary, unless our manner of formulating obvious comments makes up largely for the emptiness of our matter, we shall be accounted bores. Now, literary writing is, in kind, such talking to an unseen audience as we engage in when conversing with one another. Some of the literature of the future will perhaps be phono- graphic, rendered to us from cylinders registering the very tones of the author as he spoke his sentences. A prominent novelist of the day dictates his text to a stenographer. The man who thus speaks, or will speak, to the literary public, must speak from larger and more vital inspiration, and must be surer of himself and of his meanings, than when addressing his per- sonal circle. The ordinary talk of people, if reported and shown in print, would seem pointless and inane. It is only ideas whose worth lasts longer than the moment of utterance, or which are expressed in a manner likely to give lasting pleas- ure, that are proper matter to go into literary forms. It seems clear that we should not write what will not be worth the time or effort to express orally. Mere accuracy of diction is no warrant for saying stupid things. If we can write obvious or inconsequential meanings correctly, we can write better meanings just as well. There is no reason, as we have made clear to ourselves already, why we should consent to stultify ourselves when we write, while we are at such pains to avoid stultifying ourselves, or in any way falling below our proper level of intelligence, when we talk. Our first obliga- 210 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY tion, whether we write or speak, is to be provided with mean- ings that justify and call for utterance. Our next duty tequires that we say as well as we are able whatever we have judged worth saying. Nobody ever thinks of searching for topics to talk about. There is really no greater dearth of matter on which to write. We have realized, in earlier chapters, how endless is the array of subjects offering themselves to those willing patiently to look or think. Any object or happening that has inspired us to narrate or describe orally may be proper material, provided it is worth remembering, for literary handling. Again, while we engage oftener in narration than in description, we perhaps concern ourselves more with the natures and behavior of people, —that is, with the interpretation of character and motives, than with both combined. Any sort of character is worth drawing orally, many of the folk we meet are worth sketching more deliberately with the pen, while unique personalities are of the highest literary interest and value. All of us are un- doubtedly aware of subjects for character-analysis that are as instructive, and perhaps as striking, as the majority of types treated in the novels of the day. Besides, every one of us is continually making discoveries in motives as well as natures, some of which the world would be glad to know. Literature is in part made up of select types and sentiments of this kind, which the public has approved and is minded to preserve. But the conversation of intelligent people is not engaged more than incidentally with the new natures or motives, or with matters for mere narration or description. Life concerns itself most largely with ideas and convictions of the sort that may be developed by exposition. The essence of conversation is of thought and sentiment, and not of fact; and of thought and sentiment, and not of fact, are the values in literature. The talk of our company concerning the best course for the house-builder closed with the uncovering of principles, of wis- dom, concerning the general matter of investing money and supplying homes. Thus truth, oil-like, rises out of crude and confused exchanges of thought, and the discussion ended be- cause wisdom that satisfied the good sense of the company had come to the top. SUBSTANCE AND ORIGINALITY 211 There are three values recognizable in the conversation that this group engage in, and in all like conversations. Of the lowest worth was the notion, commonplace to all its members, of investing all one’s means in an ostentatious house. Of higher wisdom was the idea, which came to three or four of the company, of reserving some of the capital against emer- gency, for income. Of yet higher value was the plan, proposed by the last speaker, which ended the discussion. The sociolo- gist would have had it close with a full statement of the prin- ciple, already in sight, that the man intending to build houses for others is as much bound to consider the betterment of public health and comfort as to ensure the increase of his own wealth. 3 There are, similarly, three grades of thought-values in litera- ture, New Ideas, Developed or Clarified Ideas, Commonplace Ideas. The most important thing that can happen to a man or to mankind is the discernment of new principles, of new truth. This comes to us in the shape of “potential,” that is of un- realized, undeveloped notions. Morse’s idea of communication by electricity was such a notion, and has made of the civilized world one neighborhood. Marconi’s idea of telegraphy with- out wires was another such notion, and has brought the paths of the sea under observation and largely of control. Pasteur’s notion of microbes as the origin or occasion of disease has per- haps added years to the lives severally of every one of us. Darwin’s theory of progressive development through processes of the will has shown us the beginnings of our race, and seems to establish for it a career of indefinite intellectual and moral growth. The quality or activity of mind which discovers such ideas is known as Insight. It is the gift of discerning principles at first hand, either by way of facts or instances, or intuitively without them. It is the faculty of the brain or function of the soul that has originated what is of highest worth in the litera- ture of the world. Emerson, though somewhat out of favor with the present generation, will furnish a significant illustra- tion. This is the first paragraph of the work that first gained him fame: 212 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY To go into solitude a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate be- tween him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere had been made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual pres- ence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thou- sand years, how would men believe and adore; and pre- serve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. “A man is never alone when employed with his own thoughts.” This is a truth that most people probably discover at some time or other for themselves. Emerson expresses this new idea, and implies another,—that it is possible to enter into solitude, away so to speak from one’s self, at will. He then stops to give us a sentence of interpretation, which we shall need to interpret further into details of our own, like these: “When I read, I do not merely gain the meanings of my author by my powers of perception. Various companion faculties speak to me as I proceed. One voice says, “That is true,’ and another, “That is clever, surprising.’ Another voice protests, ‘But it is heartless,’ ‘it is mean,’ and soon. When I write, some mentor within tells me, ‘That is not sound,’ another says, ‘It is unworthy of you, and must be changed.’ ” After this assistance comes Emerson’s main new thought: “If I would still the voices from these seemingly separate selves in me, I have but to look at the stars. Then all the comments of dissent, of censure, of gratulation are hushed. A sentiment of sublimity swallows up all other activities of the mind. The soul is lone in a universe of mystery and power.” “One might suspect,” he goes on to say, “that the atmosphere was made transparent,’—and he might have added that the vapors of the carboniferous era were lifted—“with this design, to open to man perpetually this vision with its spiritualizing influences.” To suggest the degree of its power, he follows with the surprising truth that the sight of the stars, if with- \ SUBSTANCE AND ORIGINALITY 213 held for a thousand years, would seem hardly less at return than a veritable theophany, an unveiling of the Infinite. An eclipse of the sun stops business, and draws everybody out, with smoked lenses, to see the marvel. Children and grand- children of those privileged to watch for one night the sky, would strive to transmit the experiences told them, by word of mouth, to coming generations of their families. But what would be thus the supreme privilege of the few has been or- dained a standing spectacle for all the world. It is clear that these opening sentences from Nature are almost all of the highest value that we can recognize; that is, they are of the sort that present themselves to one mind and are accepted by all others. In that universal, one-sided con- versation that we call literature, the man of inner vision cor- responds to the last speaker of our group that discussed house- building, or would have corresponded exactly, had this person monopolized the conversation and expressed nothing but new ideas like the one broached finally to the company. Literature composed principally of new meanings cannot be read with profit rapidly. Each sentence, whether a revealment or an elucidation, may well be made over, as has just been done, into terms of one’s personal experience or thought. Most writers of marked insight, like Bacon, Hazlitt, Amiel, Matthew Arnold, Lowell, combine a few new notions with much matter of a clarifying sort. The classic worthies, as Sophocles and Plato, with the seers and thinkers of yet more ancient times, often use sentences of the second or explanatory kind, but seldom of the commonplace or third. When an idea that occurs to us seems new as well as true, it is of the kind we call Original. It may have come to many other minds, and long before our time, yet it is, in relation to ourselves, a new discovery. When a notion comes to view that has never been discerned before—and such ideas seem to present themselves now and then to all normal minds—it is original in the proper and often in the literary sense. The gift of insight which furnishes original thoughts is not dif- ferent, except in kind, from the instinctive perception which supplied Napoleon with his strategy. It was his insight that enabled the founder of the Vanderbilt fortunes to foresee the 214 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY tremendous expansion of traffic between West and East, and to prepare for it by consolidating railway lines. It was his insight that showed Spencer the idea of interminable evolution as the law of life and nature. It was insight that revealed to Grove his notion of the correlation of forces. The gift and operation of insight in many cases of this sort, and always when the degree of intuition is commanding, is known as genius. There is small occasion for any one to address the public, or propose to address it, in a literary way, if he or she has nothing to communicate but what everybody knows already. Martin Farquhar Tupper did not weigh well his values, and became a laughing-stock to discerning readers. On the other hand, if a speaker or writer is prepared to help the public comprehend and realize more clearly and finally ideas that they grasp imperfectly, he will serve them, and they will re- ward his pains. This is the general character and purpose of the sermon, the lecture, and the species of literature known as the essay. But, along with the expression of amending or clarifying meanings, there are apt to arise, in the mind of the writer, new notions of much higher worth. It is hardly possible to effect an exposition of even common ideas that have come to us with force and clearness without encountering new and illuminating thoughts. There is probably no good book or sermon or ar- ticle in existence but has been given to the public because of supposed new truths, of seemingly large value to the times. There is also much original thought administered to us in- cidentally in lighter forms. Shakespeare is perhaps the most original of all makers of literature, yet addresses us, for the most part, only through the speech of his characters, as their various personalities permit. Some of the best wisdom of recent years has been communicated to us in books of fiction. Even Dickens emits at times a flash of insight: Some purpose or other is so natural to every one, that a mere loiterer always looks and feels remarkable. Stevenson often makes his characters say truths of moment: SUBSTANCE AND ORIGINALITY 215 Yes, sir, by six-and-thirty, if a man be a follower of God’s laws, he should have made himself a home and a good name to live by. Meredith, less novelist than philosopher, abounds in sage reflections : Beauty, of course, is for the hero. Nevertheless, it is not always he on whom beauty works its most conquer- ing influence. It is the dull commonplace man into whose slow brain she drops like celestial light, and burns last- ingly. Howells is a thinker as well as a consummate artist of life and manners: We must remember that men have always been better than their conditions, and that otherwise they would have remained savages without the instinct or the wish to advance. As men grow old or infirm they fall into subjection to their womankind; their rude wills yield in the suppler in- sistence of the feminine purpose; they take the color of the feminine moods and emotions; the cycle of life com- pletes itself where it began, in helpless dependence upon the sex. Interesting is the employment of insight upon itself. These observations concerning the nature and value of the clear- seeing mind were surely not borrowed from earlier authors, but discerned over again, perhaps at the moment of utterance, by the respective writers: But literature is, almost by definition, a communication of intuitions—John Middleton Murray. It begins to be everywhere surmised that the real Force, which in this world all things must obey, is Insight, Spirit- ual Vision and determination.—Carlyle. And so it is with drama,—no matter what its form,—it need only be the “real thing,” need only have caught some of the precious fluid, revelation, and imprisoned it within a chalice to which we put our lips and continually drink. —Galsworthy. 216 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Absolutely without originality there is no man. No man whatever believes, or can believe, exactly what his grand- father believed: he enlarges somewhat, I say; finds some- what that was credible to his grandfather incredible to him, false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he has discovered or observed.—Carlyle. There is much more of substance, in literature, and of mean- ings that we call original, than most readers are aware. Many of the shallower sorts of writing show at times, along with half-truths and paradoxes, new ideas that are clever and valuable. Good plays and novels deal generally with personal and domestic complications, or with special aspects of social problems. The mass of legitimate drama and fiction is thus made up of studies in the second or clarifying values. Low- grade, “dime-novel” literature is of the third or commonplace class, while containing much that is false in philosophy and im- possible in fact. Of course, new types of character, as well as new phases or subjects of narration or description, are as truly original as new principles or thoughts. It is clearly wise and necessary to test the worth of what comes into our minds to say, as also to judge it after we have put it into form. There is a vice in authorship of a certain sort which, aware of its limitations, strives to appear original. All right and normal minds come by their proper proportion of original thoughts, for use in writing, just as they come by their personal quota of ideas, to be expressed in conversa- tion. The man who is sincere, and willing, while he has noth- ing to communicate, to hold his literary as his oral peace, will keep the respect of others and his own. If, believing in him- self, he speak or write frankly his convictions, and nothing less or more, he will not remain long undervalued. And by the use of no expedient will he be long credited beyond desert. The part of a man’s originality which concerns the manner, as distinguished from the matter of his discourse, should not be neglected. Every learner should avoid, as soon as he is able to describe, narrate, make expositions, draw character, and present emotion, the direct or conscious imitation of any model. His personal way of doing each of these things in writing, like his personal way of effecting them in conversation, will, when SUBSTANCE AND ORIGINALITY 217 perfected, become his categorically best way. He should de- velop his personal style of spoken as well as of written ut- terance. He will never profit by aping another’s manner or manners. More than all, he should exercise and respect his insight as the choicest asset of his personality. One of Emer- son’s maxims is worth remembering: “Keep a journal. Pay so much honor to the visits of Truth to your mind as to re- cord them.” EXERCISES 1. In Bacon’s essay Of Youth and Age show what ideas are to be regarded as original. 2. In the passages or paragraphs quoted in Chapter XIV show what sentences are to be classed as of the amplifying or clarifying sort. 3. From some outgrown or discarded theme, find what sen- tences are not of the first or the second grade of value. 4. Read Emerson’s Fortune of the Republic, and report ten sen- tences that seem to you unmistakably original. 5. Find and report examples from Shakespeare that illustrate the greatness of his insight. 6. Utilize, in a short story, some idea that has come to you as new and useful. 7, Read Macaulay’s Essay on Milton, and report the sentences or passages that seem to you of highest literary worth. 8. Discuss Hazlitt’s essay on Egotism as an example of exposi- tion, and designate the ideas that you think original, or com- monplace. g. Write an appreciation of Carlyle’s Burns and Macaulay’s Milton, and compare in clarifying treatment and originality. to. Select and examine a dozen paragraphs of Amiel’s Journal, and develop your impressions of their quality. 11. Examine some expository paper in the Atlantic or Harper's, and weigh its pretensions with reference to the three values recog- nized in this chapter. 12. Develop, in a brief exposition, some new notion that has come to your own mind. CHAPTER XXII ARGUMENTATION ITH the topic now reached, which concludes the first part of our studies, we may well pause and review the record of our work. Our purpose at starting was to discover, so far as practicable, the secret of present-day visual writing. We have found that certain oral processes of description, nar- ration, and character-drawing lie at the bottom of pictorial success in literary art. We have seen how exposition, though dealing with principles rather than with objects, may be made essentially visual as well as clear. We have realized also something of the relation which originality sustains to litera- ture, through noting how a new thought commands and re- wards attention in outside life. We have been helped to appre- ciate how men who hold the attention of the public intersperse what would be otherwise wearisome pronouncements, with new ideas. We begin to be aware that novelists who profess to em- ploy themselves with fresh types of experience or personality, use their best invention, like brilliant conversationalists, to bring forward and exploit new principles of human nature or society. Indeed, some of the most eminent among them seem to owe their standing more to their “philosophy,’”—that is, their originality, than to literary skill. We now need and wish to approach Argumentation, as we approached exposition, from the side of life rather than of books. We are perhaps expecting soon to study this subject from a text, and look forward with doubtful enthusiasm to the task. But literary argumentation is little different, except in degree, from the disputes and discussions that we engage in with our schoolmates and companions every day. In these debates we each manage to hold our ground with clearness, simplicity, and often with vividness of thought and speech. Here, as in earlier topics, it will be better to bring our oral instincts and habits into line, for the new work, than to at- 218 ARGUMENTATION 219 tempt the creation of new ones. While we have inherited two somewhat different dialects of English speech, one for speak- ing and one for writing, we have discovered that there is but one art, one psychology, for either. Exposition, typically considered, names the effort of one mind to help another understand or appreciate the deeper mean- ings of a subject. Exposition, as has been noted, is sometimes said to be nothing more than explanation. Like the latter word, it implies that the party of the second part is to some degree ready and willing to be shown. Argumentation, on the con- trary, carries an intimation that the mind of the individual or audience addressed is already well advised or indeed persuaded. Argumentation may therefore be defined not inexactly as expo- sition engaged in to alter the conviction or opinions of a per- son or group of people. Opinion and convictions originate from nurture and from insight. We are variously indoctrinated in the home and at school, and so derive respective preferences and aversions. An- terior to all instruction, different personal endowments in- dividualize us severally toa marked degree. Moreover, insight, though an instinct or sense of truth, does not furnish identical perceptions of the same truth even to like-minded folk. Dif- ferences of temperament, taste, and circumstance tend to in- tensify disparity of judgments, and force us in framing them to vital disagreements of theory and action. Argumentation aims to establish agreement between dissent- ing minds by attempting to bring mooted instances under the application of mutually accepted principles. It is sometimes public and formal, but vastly oftener informal and unpremedi- tated. Each one of us is constantly drawn into debate with our friends or fellows over matters of theirs which we do not ap- prove, and not less constantly our friends appeal to reason against us over certain of our ways and views. What we do, all the world is doing in the same spirit and after the same fashion. Thus is argumentation one of the most incessant and inevitable employments of the mind. Beginning with a per- sonal conviction, it may found a party, a sect, or even a re- ligion. To illustrate, first, its more technical and formal proc- esses, we will rehearse an example from civic life. 220 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY In a small but ambitious city of some 10,000 inhabitants, a public-spirited and optimistic citizen proposes that the prin- cipal business and residence streets be paved. He insists that the town is financially ready, that the value of fronting property will increase beyond the cost of the improvements called for, through the influx of new residents and capital, and that pub- lic spirit alone should prompt the people to meet the expense, if need were, from their surplus means. This man’s circle of friends, and soon the city, is divided into parties. There is endless debate on the street corners and everywhere. Those who propose a departure from an existing state of affairs are called the affirmative side or party, and must as- sume the burden of establishing their cause. “He who affirms must prove.” The opposing party needs only to deny the con- tentions of the affirmative, yet will also generally attempt to strengthen itself by offering positive arguments to support its negative views. The unit in discussions of this kind is called an Argument. An argument is a reason, involving an axiom or other prin- ciple presumably acceptable to the hostile side, but tending to establish some contention of its opponents. Here the argu- ments which the affirmative has presented in all confidence as self-evident propositions are: First, that the city is financially in readiness to begin the paving of its streets; Second, that property values will at once increase and cover at least the cost of the proposed improvements; Third, that there will be de- mand, from outside the city, for the improved property at its enhanced valuation; and Fourth, that the town could well afford to invest the cost of paving its streets for reasons of civic pride. At the next stage, the question comes up for debate in the city council, the members of which, like the citizens, are divided in opinion. At the first meeting, after a motion to issue bonds for paving has been made and supported by the arguments already summarized, a spokesman for the opposition or nega- tive replies in this vein: Common sense as well as experience testifies that, in matters of public policy, a community always divides itself ARGUMENTATION 221 into two parties. There is, of course, the party of change, or, as it styles itself, the party of progress. This part of the public is on the lookout for something new, and is mainly anxious to establish in the small what has been found desirable in the large. It forces the season of im- provements, so to speak, under glass. Here, the party of haste, of daring innovation, proposes to treat our little borough to the luxury of bonded indebtedness, in order that we may boast of urban features of no use or profit. It affirms that we are abundantly able to begin paving our streets. I admit that we have the means, but deny that we can afford to use them for a foolish purpose, and the majority of heavy tax-payers deny it with me. We are told that property will rise in value sufficiently to absorb the cost. I deny this as sheer assumption. No proof whatever has been offered. We are further assured that, if we pave our city, it will attract new residents who will be glad to buy our holdings at the enhanced prices he predicts. I say there is not the slightest ground for such a declaration. As for drawing on our bank ac- counts to polish up the streets, I for one will say that I am willing to spend some of my money in ornamenting the front of my grounds, but shall resist the injustice of being forced to do it until my neighbor is ready to paint his house and mow his lawn. The first business of the negative is properly contradiction. As the speaker for the affirmative confines himself to assertions that he has apparently assumed would not be challenged, his opponent appropriately denies, and puts him to his proofs. These the former speaker, who has taken pains to prepare him- self fully upon the question, now supplies: My friend charges me with making gratuitous assump- tions. I gave him credit for being abreast of the times in knowledge that I did not stop to rehearse,—namely, that towns which pave increase at once the value of frontage property to the extent of costs incurred. Surely a citizen of such wide reading and acquaintance with affairs must have at some time known that this has been true in the life of cities for generations. It is what has happened in Lowell and Lawrence and Haverhill, and Omaha and Denver and St. Paul. Statistics which I have before me, obtained by comparing grand lists of twenty cities in years just before and just after reaching the paving stage, will, I think, absolve me from the charge of guesswork in this 222 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY business. As for my argument from increased prices, which he is pleased to rank also among assumptions, I have figures showing transactions in realty among the cities I have named and establishing my contention with- out an exception in the list. The average increase of values, as shown in the transfers, is twenty-three per cent. Our friend affirms that the majority of our larger owners of city property are against improvements. I fear that here he is himself furnishing an ideal example of working off assumptions and assertions in lieu of argument. The fact is that, by actual canvass—and I have the names before me—sixty per cent of those taxed for realty in this “borough,” as he calls it, and representing seventy-two per cent of the taxable property, favor the idea of paving this year. I am glad my opponent has called attention to the truth that there is always a conservative party, or, as it might be called, the party of inertia, when any advancement is proposed. There was such a party in the country at the time of the Revolution. Those composing it were known as Tories, but they failed to win or recommend their cause. There was a conservative party, which, in the Civil War, advocated peace, with a division of the country, and the continued enslavement of the negro. ‘The first paving of Chicago and of New York was undoubtedly begun against the protests of the party of stagnation, which might be conceivably opposed, on account of in- creased taxes, to pavements even yet. The negative speaker now affirms, in reply, that the con- servative side of society has been as often right, in the long run, as the progressive. In the parliamentary struggle in England, conservatism won at the end. In the French Revolution, and the Revolutions in Spain and elsewhere, parties of reckless change were overthrown. In our own country, we have had the Know-Nothing craze, the Greenback craze, the Free Sil- ver craze, and some others not less absurd. ‘But we are not so besotted,” he insists, “as to revolt against the idea of pave- ments altogether. They are necessary in a busy town, and save many times their cost. They are not a necessity with us, and would not be worth more than a fraction of the investment. The question really is, Under what conditions should an am- bitious village assume the burdens of city taxation? It should have become a commercial and manufacturing center. We are ARGUMENTATION 223 a residence city. To warrant change, there should be financial loss from the use of unpaved streets. In an unpaved business city of which I know, and one having more inhabitants than ours, a certain builder lost $1800 from increased drayage charges, due to miry streets, in a single month. But I have yet to learn of any builder or merchant here being put to extra expense from the condition of the streets in the worst seasons. Besides, there should be other reasons than saving, there should be a greater volume of business in sight. We have no prospect of immediate growth in trade or population. The cost of $100 a lot on each side of improved streets must be raised entirely, as also interest charges met, from the present unexpanded in- comes of our people.” The second speaker is manifestly the better thinker, being able to hold his own, when worsted in his attempt at facts, by laying emphasis on principles. The best debater, funda- mentally, is the one possessed of the deepest and most ready insight. But the man of originality, like this one, must not depend too confidently on his powers of analysis and invention. These data needful in such a case cannot be supplied, as he has learned, by intuition. His adversary has taken the trouble to be armed with figures, and has scored. But this representative of the negative has been the first to state the case correctly. To realize this, we must examine the framework of the dispute in progress, and all like discussions. In debates such as the present, the form of reasoning in- volved is called a Syllogism. In each syllogism there is, first, a Major Premise or principle; as, to take a stock example, “All men are mortal.” There is also a Minor Premise, which is not a general but a particular fact or truth, as “Socrates is a man.” Then follows the Conclusion, showing the consequence of ap- plying the general principle in the major premise to the par- ticular example in the minor; as here, “Therefore Socrates is mortal.” The conclusion is always unequivocal and final, if both premises are correct. It is to these, accordingly, that particular attention must be paid. In the present discussion, as the last debater has in effect implied, the minor premise is the center of difficulty. The for- mal syllogism begins thus: “At a certain point in the growth 224 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY of a city, pavements become proper and necessary.” This is the major premise, and is not disputed. The minor premise is, “This city of ours has reached that particular point or stage.” Were this also admitted, the conclusion, “That our city should at once begin to provide itself with pavements,” would follow. But the minor premise has not been established, and from present promise is not likely to be established, It is only now, after much bandying of assertions, that the real point at issue has been uncovered. The affirmative side must show what the prerequisite development must consist in, as also that their town has reached it. Their speakers must pre- sent figures exhibiting the amount of traffic on business thor- oughfares, and the saving in horse or motor power to be effected by providing firm, smooth driveways. The opposi- tion will score a point by establishing that the development of a city is not measured by the growth of its population. The resources in a town of ten thousand factory opera- tives and their families are less than would be looked for in a suburb of a thousand homes supported by large in- comes. Again, a town of five thousand operatives employed in the manufacture of traction engines, or other products in- volving large use of the streets, might require, as a matter of public economy, solid and expensive roadbeds. But the question, as often happens, will not be argued expertly, or settled through any yielding of the opposition. By major vote, the motion to issue bonds will be adopted, or defeated, and the town will remain divided perhaps for years on the wisdom or equity of the project. The major premise as a law or principle is established gen- erally from observation and by induction. The first sentence in our stock example, “All men are mortal,” is an inferred, not demonstrated, truth. We induce the judgment, intuitively from instances and experience, that the human constitution is of a sort that must succumb to eventual decay. There can be no argument against the soundness of this conclusion. Yet violent exception is sometimes taken to principles brought for- ward as established by this process, as even yet to the dogma of evolution, and of the descent of man. The debate then goes over from the minor premise, which held it solely in the ARGUMENTATION 225 example studied, to the major. And, oftener than all, there is no end of gratuitous and even bickering contention everywhere, while unconsidered assumptions are treated as major premises. We will now choose an instance from the feminine side of life as matter for our second example of argumentation. Two students in a woman’s college engage in a dispute concerning just expenditures for a lady’s wardrobe. One of them is greatly disturbed over the refusal, from a relative who is her guardian, of her request for a new dinner gown. Her room- mate approves his decision, and the controversy grows loud and warm. “You have no need away from home society of fresh party clothes,” her censurer insists. “But girls shut up in school have some claims they would not urge at home,” is the querulous rejoinder. Class friends who overhear come in from the corridor, the discussion grows more formal and con- sidered, and, after a few exchanges of argument between the principal debaters, becomes general. Forgetting the two major premises that they have just formulated incidentally, the contestants prepare to defend their positions more fundamentally. The aggrieved young lady, taking up the burden of a true affirmative, is the first to speak. With less animus, and with ideas which go considerably be- yond her personal convictions,—since she is now trying to bolster up a cause, she reopens the case substantially in these terms: In the divisions of social function, woman is the guardian and promoter of public taste. It is man’s part to provide the means. The constant changes in the fash- ions of woman’s dress, though often ridiculed, furnish the chief means of exercising and improving her artistic sense. Nothing so benumbs her sensitiveness and defeats her growth as to be forced to wear and contemplate staled modes from day to day. All young women who belong to refined families should refresh their minds with new forms before they tire too much of what is old. I hold also that women, as alone gifted with an acute sense of form and color, should be sole judges of the time as well as the extent of changes in their personal attire. They should not be subject to arbitrary denials. The right to gratify the demands of taste, when all the daughters of a household have come to years of understanding, should 226 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY be vested in each member independently. The head of the family, or his representative, cannot be expected to act wisely or even justly in dealing with the cravings of the individual mind. All this, as I understand, belongs to the doctrine called Feminism, with which I consider myself mainly in accord. This young lady has had time to fortify herself a little, and in the first paragraph expresses approximately the major prin- ciple vaguely in the minds of both when they began to argue. That women are socially commissioned to express their tastes within reasonable and practicable limits, in personal attire and in the home, is a good working assumption. The minor prem- ise—the desire of this young lady to express her taste in the form requested—was the point originally in question. But what the speaker attempts to add to the major principle, in her next paragraph, is at least surprising. She asserts in effect that the extent to which taste and cost may govern in the replenishment of a lady’s wardrobe is a matter to be left for taste to judge. In other words, while the first paragraph formulates a principle holding good for society, in kind, this affirms that it holds good without limit in degree. Questions of ways and means, and of justice to rival claimants, can have no place. Of course, debate upon such an issue would be preposterous. Yet this is a fair example of what happens in unconsidered, unguarded disputation. It reminds one of the ground taken by a senior in a college of science, when, arguing for the drama, he asserted in all seriousness that the theater was an out and out moral force, always increasing in efficacy, and destined one day to accomplish the moral regeneration of the world. The second young lady, collecting herself in preparation to repeat and strengthen her former arguments, does not notice that the minor premise has been withdrawn. Her roommate, to avoid seeming, on the entry of outsiders, to argue for herself personally, has taken refuge behind all womanhood at large. The chance reference at the close of the speech just made, which commits her friend doubtfully to feminism, has stirred the ire of the next speaker. She must needs first pay her respects to that: ARGUMENTATION 227 Feminism is the shameless name of self-seeking for womankind. Self-seeking is nowhere a virtue, everywhere a vice. It defeats character-building, makes its victim conspicuous to everybody, and fails of its purpose at the end. It aims to gain the whole world and loses its own soul. When any man, or woman, or nation sets up a cam- paign of self-aggrandizement, such campaign ipso facto is doomed to failure. Woman has won her place, not by might or by power, but through her graces by the grace of God. The moment she gets what she wishes, by ex- torting it, she will obtain only what she deserves, what she gives an equivalent for. She gets now what the world is pleased to deceive itself into believing she deserves, and all in spite of her real desert. Feminism will take away from fathers, brothers, lovers, and even guardians the chivalrous privilege of giving. Will it ever get fine clothes for cooks and washerwomen? If this were a world devoted merely, as the Greeks dreamed, to the service of beauty, the doctrines just laid down would be pleasing to all of us. But two thousand years of history prove that the Greeks were wrong. There is beauty in the world, and it has its claims, but its claims are neither fundamental nor paramount. There are few homes in America or other countries in which stern needs do not have precedence of all demands of taste. All rights and privileges, we are told, are based upon obligations. All who receive must at some time or sometimes give. I do not feel that I am satisfying or have ever satisfied any part of this obligation. I am anxious not recklessly to increase its claims. A large share of the wealth produced in this country is spent on the adornment of its women. I wish it were possible for all our womanhood to be clothed not only comfortably but elegantly. But three-fifths of the women in America and everywhere besides are denied all chance to gratify their tastes by dress. The cost of the clothes and finery that the remaining two-fifths enjoy is vastly beyond their deserts or worth. I do not wish to be classed with these two-fifths of my sex. I do not crave any enlargement of my rights. I would be of those who enjoy even their obligations. Following these suggestive sentences, one of the outsiders at- tempts rebuttal, in this vein: For my part, I do not see where the obligations that go with privilege come from. I do not think or feel that 228 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY the existing order is sacred. I have never consented to it. I do not consider my rights or advantages satisfying or even interesting. I find myself here in the world by no wish or approval of my own. I am not grateful for existence. I do not feel in debt to anybody, certainly not to what is called society. The order of things which fixed me here on this planet is under obligation to support me here on my own terms. If I conform to the usual social laws, my debt is paid. I cost society nothing. Why should I render it anything? It does not contribute to my expenses. Why should it abridge my wants? So the discussion might go on endlessly, with everybody befogged as to the main issue, and arguing, each one against the last, or on something incidentally disapproved. What is needed to save the debate is a clear-headed mentor, who knows the rules, and can guide the discussion along right lines. We may imagine such an adviser present, called upon for counsel, and responding with comments and directions such as these: Quite evidently little good can come from debating over a dead issue. The original case, whether our friend is to have her party gown, has already been settled, as I understand, by authority outside of court. But academic questions are more or less fascinating, and this one, with certain changes, might be argued with some profit. So far as I have heard it, I should judge it only negatively useful,—I mean, as an example of “how not to do it.” The first thing necessary in standard argumentation is to have a plain, unequivocal proposition to debate about. Now, granting that the matter which you have been argu- ing over were worth while, which, mind you, I do not concede, you might phrase it thus, “Resolved, that women have a native right to spend all the money, for the gratifi- cation of taste, that they can command.” Or it would per- haps be fairer to both sides to state it in the form of a question: “Are women entitled, because they are women, to expend upon the demands of taste all means available?” But I suspect most of us feel that all this is trivial, that we have not gone deep enough to reach the heart of the matter. Is not this more nearly what you have wished to argue? “Is their share in the profits of society, placed at the disposal of cultivated and uncultivated women alike for the gratification of personal tastes, greater or less than is consistent with public policy?” In this form the ques- ARGUMENTATION tion can be discussed to some effect. But it will call for original and independent thinking, as well as statistics and authorities. Personal opinions and preferences can have no bearing. Whether I incline or do not incline to feminism is not in the least material. Nothing but argu- ment, open reasoning, is in order. Nothing is argument that in itself admits of argument. Only ascertained facts, and self-evident principles, can be used. Then, we must remember that volubility, unction, and sharpness of repar- tee are not in themselves material. It is better to argue falteringly with soundness on a definite issue, than to scale the heights of eloquence when there is no question before the house. It is of course untrue that no one of us owes society anything. It is estimated that the cost of rearing a young lady of “refined family” is not less than $25,000. This amount of its capital is invested by society, for society, in each of us. Now society, though abstract in name, is a very concrete thing. It means primarily the organized public in which we live, not only free from molestation, but in daily ease and comfort. Yet society, seeming to demand nothing, has the right to exact everybody’s all. Society means our fathers and mothers, everybody’s father and mother, who, with all their resources and influence, stand ready to give their lives to prevent a public enemy from destroying us, or from limiting the possibilities of our future. We are here at this moment because the fathers of other young women, denied in their day what we enjoy, gave their all to their country, to the collective society of their time. It is now generally recognized that wealth, or the for- tunes of the rich, do not belong to individuals, but to society at large. Those who are said to possess it hold it only in trust. Society has been built up by men who have fought to make it possible. But they did not fight for themselves. They fought for their mothers, who bred them to manliness, they fought for their wives, who made their homes. So woman is entitled to somewhat, a large somewhat, of the wealth which society acquires, not as a right merely, but also as a tribute. What society asks of woman in return is that she retain warrant for man’s idealization. It is this idealization that has advanced civilization hitherto. To permit men to lose their ideals of womanhood would mean the de- cline and fall of the ruling races, and the displacement of these by another or others which, through two thou- sand years of struggle, might only repeat the unhopeful 229 230 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY process. We live in an era of cheapened and cheapening womanhood. We have concerns more vital than the culti- vation of taste in clothes. The ennobling satisfactions of life come from within. Men look, most of all, to women to exemplify this truth. The complications and confusion of this example are not greater than are likely to arise in the course of an ordinary school debate. Nor is the naive frequency of assertions and assumptions put forward in it as arguments or proofs un- usual. Many of these, it may be noted, go back to the fault of Hasty Generalization. We go to Scotland or Holland, where there are showers the first day and the second, and we say, “What a queer country! It rains every day,” or, “It rains every Friday here.” We do not of course say this from an actual conviction. Our minds would like to generalize, and we half-playfully indulge them. But we draw many conclusions in all seriousness that are essentially as foolish, and not seldom do it in argument. Inductions should neither be ventured nor accepted save when we are sure that all possible instances agree with those personally reported or observed. Sometimes, in the progress of a demonstration, we think or feel that we have established our principle, and without warrant speak of it as proved. A man writes a text-book on grammar which is intended to make the subject fascinating to every learner. He directs the teacher how to administer it, step by step, and is thus, as he thinks, supplying proofs of its efficiency. But after half-a-dozen such steps are detailed, he cautions the teacher lest the growing fondness for grammar, among his pupils, interfere with interest in their other work. This growing fondness, which as yet is only promised, he asks his reader to accept as already in existence, though he has been merely telling how a trial might be made. He has introduced no evidence whatever, and perhaps has never put his method to the test This species of error is called Begging the Question. It is essential that argumentation should be inspired by genu- ine belief in the principles avowed. If it is not an expression of the real sentiments or opinions of those engaging in it, it 1 This is not an imagined example, but outlines the history of an actual case. ARGUMENTATION 231 is of doubtful ethics and value. We should beware of affirming convictions, for any purpose, that we do not feel. To argue from less than persuasion of truth, and for mere training, gives practice in pretense, and in false thinking. The sense of right should not be dulled, but sharpened. We should learn to be exact and instant in distinctions of the sort which simu- lated argumentation tends to belittle, or at least confuse. To ensure helpful and satisfying debates, there should be a capable presiding officer, to act as judge. He should rule out improper evidence, sum arguments, and, if practicable, should express and explain his opinion as to which side of the question has been better handled. Such a moderator, in the discussion first outlined, would have pointed out that the statis- tics of the affirmative were not obtained from cities of the same class as the one in question, and that sales reported were not, so far as shown, of improved property more than of un- improved. The negative, in turn, should not have been left in the belief that its reference to revolutions was valid reason- ing, or that radicalism and conservatism forever contend with- out preponderance of advantage on either side. All progress comes by prevailments of those proposing change over the ad- vocates of a static policy. The conservative elements are the weight in the momentum of advance. The radical elements are the determining factor of its speed. EXERCISES 1. Recall some recent discussion in which you were engaged, and make a report of the question at issue, and the chief argu- ments on each side. Formulate the major and the minor premise, note whether the burden of proof was assumed by the right party, and show whether any conclusion was or was not rightly estab- lished by the arguments employed. 2. Give an observed example of Hasty Generalization. 3. In the movement against fraternities in high schools, what is the major premise? Outline the syllogism, and anticipate the chief arguments on each side. 4. Were the question of the classics as against the modern languages to be argued anew, which side would be affirmative? What would be the best arguments it could offer? 232 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY 5. Detail an instance, from observation, of Begging the Question. 6. Formulate for debate the question of making all subjects of high school study elective. Show what major premise would need to be established, and what arguments would be valid on either side. 7. Formulate the syllogism, and debate the question of reliev- ing girls from the requirement of laboratory work in chemistry. 8. Resolved that fashions in the dress of men as well as of women should not be copied from foreign models. Develop the arguments for the affirmative side. 9g. Resolved that every boy should learn a trade or craft. 10. Resolved that practice in reporting and other writing for the papers offers the best preparation for a literary career. 11. Analyze Tolstoy’s Napoleon’s Campaign in Russia, and sum- marize his arguments, and conclusions. 12. What indubitable facts and self-evident principles do you find in the paragraphs (pp. 221, 222) of the second speaker? 13. Select one of your exercises in Exposition, and show how, if the fundamental notion developed in it were denied, you might adapt and utilize some of the same matter in Argumentation. 14. Show whether all of the allegations (pp. 228-230) of the last speaker are to be accepted as axioms or facts. 15. Describe the sword called tesak. CHAPTER XXIII NARRATION BY IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE HE sum of rhetorical endeavor, to quote a dictum of Professor Brewster, includes “making clear the idea, and making it take.” But it is possible to make one’s meaning “taking” as well as “clear,” yet fail of the result at which one aims. Professor Brewster undoubtedly assumes that to write takingly is also to write effectively. We pass now to the prob- lems of making written communication taking, that is, of charg- ing it with qualities that will engage the attention and ensure the interest of the reader. Half a century and more ago, literary writing was addressed to the literary public. Rhetorical endeavor did not need to be taking, and generally indeed was not. The Nation, the Atlantic Monthly, and the North American Review set the standard for cultivated folk. Less privileged people found the contents of such magazines and weeklies dry, and were duly supplied with books and periodicals of another kind, both elementary in language and sensational in ideas. This second class of readers has given place to a generation better educated and more intellectually alert, and the dime-novel and Fireside- Companion literature of their fathers has virtually disappeared. The contents of high-class weeklies and monthlies are now “taking” instead of dry, and can be read at large by those who will. On the other hand, people of more exclusive tastes have ceased to care greatly for authors of the toilsome and self- conscious school. So the literary writer of to-day addresses practically the whole reading public. His books and articles must bid for the interest of the educated and the common reader alike, and hold it equally, if need be, against the will of both. The technic of books has compounded with the technic of life, and assumed its power. 233 234 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY So the oral method, old as the race, of presenting events and incidents through imaginative inference, has become a literary mode. It is often more important to present a happening with vividness than with exact details. We can make the imagina- tion of the reader construct a scene that will be approximately correct, while we could not make it combine systematic parts, to form a whole, with the least success. The following will illustrate : Crossing a crevasse in the Klondike, one member of a party lost his footing and slid into the chasm. He shouted to those who stopped not to delay, as he could not be rescued. They went on, supposing that in an hour he would be dead. ‘Ten minutes later another party, fol- lowing, began to cross. The man below hailed them, and learned that they were provided with ropes, as his own company was not. Speedily he was again upon the trail, and overtook his companions as they were reaching a camp, just as his wife, now first learning that he had been left, sank screaming upon the snow. Here is an incident of Alaskan history which concerned two lives supremely, yet is condensed into a single paragraph. Be- cause of its human interest, the old-time narrator would have felt bound to set forth how the mishap occurred, how the crevasse looked, and how the man was lifted out. Responding to its human interest more naturally and simply, the modern narrator leaves these things out. They are all, in effect, sup- plied vividly by imagination as we read. And imagination is kindled by the mischance told of in the first sentence, and is intensified by the appeal of emotion in the last. The bare recital of happenings like these forces us back upon our experiences of life, and makes us construct, from mate- rials of our own, a pictorial realization of what is told. If we have never seen glaciers or a crevasse, we satisfy ourselves with conceptions that come up as the nearest substitutes, out of our minds, and go on with the picture. Were we unable to imagine anything like mountains or ice-fields, we should still make up a scene that would represent the incident. In any case, the product, if inexact, would be real and living to us. Why is not the insistence of the man that his companions NARRATION BY IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE 235 leave him and save themselves an appeal of character? It is truly in nature and in possibilities an “appeal of character in degree.” But it is not permitted to serve as an appeal of this kind here. Imagination has been engaged already by the awful mishap. Our interest in the victim is merely human, general, and does not concern itself with his individuality. Any other member of the company, falling similarly, would have affected the rest in the same manner. After the man is rescued, we do not gain acquaintance with him, nor was it intended that we should gain an acquaintance with him, as a personality. His falling into the crevasse is plainly the cir- cumstance that makes the scene rise before our minds. We have thus another species of imaginative appeals. Since they deal, not with character or with mood, but with outside affairs or happenings, they may be styled Imaginative Appeals of Incident. A simpler example will make this clear: I happened to look up, and saw my sabre, which was suspended from the wall, swinging vigorously. I dashed downstairs and out of doors, since the building was of brick, and cheaply and unsubstantially constructed. It is evident that the reason given by the speaker here is not the reason for his going down stairs hastily or at all. The explanation of his act lies in the “Common Cause,” which be- trays itself in the swinging of the sword, and threatens the lives of all who remain within the building. The diagram used (p. 161) for characterization will, with slight changes, show the behavior of imagination here: SPHERE OF IMAGINA- COMMON DANGER TION AND THE INTEL- i EMOFIONALLY LECTUAL LIFE CA VISUALIZED MATERIAL SPHERE OF THE SENSES AND THE PHYSICAL LIFE 236 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY The imaginative appeals employed in literature are various and often powerful. These are typical examples: Mr. Dyce’s partner, Mr. Cleland, who smelt of cloves and did not care for tea. On the kitchen porch at the side of a vacant house, close to the door where the mat once was, lay week after week a half-starved hunting dog. It was midsummer, July was nearly spent, and the grass on the lawn had not been mowed that year. A woman bending over him placed a reluctant hand upon his heart. “He does not die yet, this bandit they have eee us,” she remarked to a companion busy behind er. The wounded man opened his eyes very widely and winked. The Miss Maruja started back in alarm and turned towards the little Sister Tula. “Gertrude!” cried Anthony Eccles, in a voice which charged the curt word with a long story. In the first quotation, the appeal of course betrays the tippler. But, as in the first illustration of this chapter, our imaginations are almost wholly employed with emotional and visual infer- ences of the fact, and do not go on to employ themselves — especially with the personality. In the second example, the tragedy of the empty house slowly constructs itself before our fancy. The home-life has been broken up by the death of some member of the household, the family has dispersed, the furniture disposed of, and the dog sold or given away to another master. But fondness for the old life forestalls de- votion to the new, and the doting servant waits here for the sound of a voice that never calls. In the third illustration, the bandit is plainly a lover, who finds himself here with hopes of something other and further than recovery from his hurts. But the method of life, as a rule, forces “the effect intended” even more potently upon our imagination. There are number- less illustrations: What do I know about him? We came from the same town in Ohio, and worked clerking together for some time. We each got seventy dollars a month, but he spent half NARRATION BY IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE 237 as much more. The last time I saw him, he was riding into town on a buckboard, with men standing on the axles. He was sitting with a man whose left hand was attached to the handcuffs he wore. The men on the axles were some of the posse who ran him down. Do you know what they did with him? Oh, yes, I know. Last week the manager of the quarry saw his little girl, six years old, coming towards him with two pails, one in each hand, almost full of nitroglycerine. He called to her not to hurry, and not to stumble, and he would meet her. When she came up, he told her to set the pails down carefully. Then, with face still white, he took the little thing up in his arms and walked towards home, calling to one of the gang who were watching at a distance to carry the pails back to the storehouse, and see that it was kept locked thereafter. None of the men worked any more that day. A woman of about thirty, with a girl of eight, her daughter probably, stopped me in front of the University grounds to-day, to ask where she might find a professor of chemistry. “I have a capsule,” she said with suppressed excitement, “which I wish to have some one analyze.” She would marry the fellow in spite of everybody. How she gets on nobody knows. Have you noticed that the diamonds are all gone from her rings? What have you been doing? Your face is all bloody. Yes, Mother, I threw a stone at Jim Huff and it hit him. “T suppose you know what you have got in your throat,” the doctor said, as he drew the wooden case of an ominous- looking phial from his waistcoat pocket. The telltale spots on the throat are “effects given,” effects of the ‘“‘common cause” which is fast bringing on the critical stage in an attack of diphtheria. From the presence of this cause, the imagination of the patient and of others anticipates the pain and risks of illness. The devotion of the wife who sells her diamonds for family needs cannot be told at better length. The startling reticence of the man concerning the career and fate of his former friend, whom he saw in the hands of the sheriff, is eloquent beyond the might of words. To supply the parts here left out would, in each case, spoil 238 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY all. Literature is beginning to take over the pithiness and energy of oral utterance that the race doubtless achieved even in the generations of its childhood. Dante set the example, six hundred years ago, with his single line, Quel giorno pit non vi leggemmo avante, and we praise it, supposing it famous because it is merely a single line, and not bothering to inquire about the principle that would enable anybody not a Dante to do the like. We perhaps still crave the academic satisfaction of literalizing, in proper or polished periods, some moving incident. We can point to the examples in Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico, and Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast. Their works of course are classics, as is Bancroft’s History. But were these authors living now, they would write at times more naturally and feelingly—using the method of appeals—though doubtless with no less care. We little realize the extent to which life abounds in imagina- tive inferences or anticipations of good and ill. The turn of the market brings visions of poverty, or of. wealth. The drought of spring makes the farmer see his crops in midsum- mer dying for thirst. Phylloxera inspires pictures of wasted vineyards. From some unconscious hint, the lover infers the preference of his inamorata, and through it sees the vista of his happiness. By inadvertent appeals of incident, as interpreted by professional or other detectives, the secrets of conduct are laid bare. Many experiences of personal suffering are told in essence by the same means. The father of the present writer narrowly escaped death, some years ago, in a head-on railway collision. He was pinned down under a seat, covered with a mass of wreckage, and suf- fered fractures of an arm and hideous bruises. For some months after, when asked concerning the nature and degree of the accident, and of his hurts, my father would bring out the coat, worn on the day of the disaster, the back of which was torn to shreds. This showing of the coat was not gen- erally accompanied by any explanation, and there were not 1 We read no further in the book that day.—IJnferno, V. 138. NARRATION BY IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE 239 often questions or comments from those who saw. Their imaginations were forced by the sight to picture the wearer face-down under the debris, with the mass of broken wheels and timbers doing their crushing and grinding work above, and with fellow victims dying near,—sixteen in all. Incident appeals, like appeals of character or of mood, may be of kind or of degree. The marks by which a physician diagnoses sickness are peculiarly of kind; those by which, in some turn for the worse, he presages a fatal termination, are generally of degree. The prospect of death, to most natures anywhere, is intensely visual. We are vastly more concerned, in the majority of cases, over the degree than the kind of in- cident. When one of our household is brought home un- conscious in an ambulance, we care nothing, until we know its extent, for the kind of injury. “Is it fatal?” “Is it very dan- gerous?” is all we ask. Later, when it is told that the mischief was done in an automobile or an elevator accident, we shall perhaps be able or content to listen. The forces of nature and their work, considered apart from the helplessness of men, furnish potent appeals to imagination. The mention of an earthquake that opens the ground for a quarter of a mile, or of the blast in a quarry that lifts off the brow of a mountain, compels a state of mental realization that constructs the scene. It is easy to compare cases of this kind with others like the following, which involve an element of hu- man sympathy: Two of our sailors being prostrate with fever, it was nothing strange that the engineer of our yacht turned pale as he watched the fall of the mercury in the glass. Nobody on board had ever seen the column descend so suddenly, or go so low. Besides, we were half-a-day’s sail from Barbados or any harbor. In this example, which is similar to others considered in the present chapter, the appeal to imagination is heightened by our uneasiness of mind for the persons on board the yacht, which, inadequately manned, must soon cope with the hurricane. But a like fall of mercury in the barometers at the weather station of Havana or Hong Kong, where there is security for all con- 240 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY cerned, would serve as an appeal to imagination not much less powerful. Imaginative appeals of incident by no means fill so large a place in life as appeals of character, or even mood. The greatest interest and worth that we can know center in per- sonality. Hence appeals of character rank as the first of all materials in literature. Next in value follow human emotions and experiences, as indicated and communicated through ap- peals of mood. Lowest are to be classed happenings in the outer, material world, and, as expedients to betoken these, imaginative appeals of incident. All imaginative appeals, whether of character, incident or mood, are in nature, as we remember, of either degree or kind. In accord with these basic truths and modes, we may dis- tinguish three grades of worth in art and letters. The lowest values lie in the literature of incident, as in the adventure stories of childhood, Hewlett’s Dark Forest, and Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. We recognize as ranking above this level, the literature of character or personality as such, as in Last of the Mohicans, Richard Yea and Nay, and Shakespeare’s Richard III. Last and highest, we have personality in its spiritual effectuations, as in So Big, the prize novel of 1924, and Shakespeare’s Kent, and Prospero, and Hermione, and Imogen, and his Roman Portia. Appeals of incident, again, may be of the Cause Form, like our barometer examples, and force imagination to anticipate visually the consequences that are to follow. They may be of Effect Form, compelling imagination to realize and picture, from the destruction viewed, the action of the cause that has been at work. The track of a tornado, strewn with fragments of trees and buildings, makes us visualize, in the effect way, the processes of the storm. The vastness, the appalling enor- mity of the forces, appeal to our sense of the sublime, and induce the visual conception that we do not invite, and cannot suppress. On the other hand, the sight of a dark funnel-shaped cloud fills our minds, in the casual manner, with visual terror of the devastation that we know is on its way. The mind of the narrator, provided with both these means, will choose as his instinct for the stronger effect wisely or unwisely guides him. NARRATION BY IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE 241 Pictorial reports of events in life and nature, told by imagina- tive appeals, make up the lore of neighborhoods, and still serve largely as a substitute for the literature of books. People listen spellbound while their friends tell of experiences in sickness, in fright, in danger. Hairbreadth escapes do not lose their visual charm even in maturest years. Imagination delights to construct from threatening conditions the catastrophe that did not follow. It seems more fond of supplying the suspended conclusion (p. 115), the cause being given, than of restoring the cause from effects the most suggestive and appalling. The great examples in literature seem to bear this out. One thinks at once of the Scylla and Charybdis of Homer and Virgil; of the terrors of Grendel and his mother; of the fire-drakes in Teutonic and northern myths; of the visions of power making for torment or for cleansing, in Dante’s poem; and of the por- tentous spectacles in Milton’s Paradise Lost. It is manifestly a favorite mode in fiction. From childhood we share with Crusoe his dismay at sight of the footprint upon the sand. Poe amuses his fancy, in The Pit and the Pendulum, with a chamber of threatened horrors. At one stage his victim, strapped prostrate upon a frame nailed to the floor, watches the thirty-foot sweep of a mighty pendulum vibrating across his body, and carrying a razor edge that each stroke brings nearer and nearer to his heart: It might have been half an hour, perhaps even an hour —for I could take but imperfect note of time—before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then saw con- founded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence its velocity was also much greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that it had descended. I now observed—with what horror it is need- less to say—that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evi- dently as keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also, it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from edge into a solid and broad structure above. It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole hissed as it swung through the air. 242 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY It must be borne in mind that imaginative appeals of in- cident, in all these cases, are parts or means of narration, and the vital parts. We often tell things, not because of any value in the things, that we may enjoy the strange and sure effec- tiveness of the telling. Senseless stories are retailed again and again merely to give the hearer the pleasure of seeing a whole truth, a most unexpected truth, spread out vividly, from a single “effect given,” in his imagination,—as in this: “Oh, Dick,” cried his wife breathless as she rushed into her hus- band’s office, “I have lost my diamond ring.” “It’s all right, Bess,” he answered, “I found it in my trousers pocket.” Ap- peals like this are the logarithms of the narrative process. It is stupid and absurd to say, after reporting that a trolley wire has dropped upon a crowded crossing, that injuries follow. The mind would rather frame a conclusion than suffer it to be mechanically obtruded. Imaginative appeals are greater in degree than logarithms, which merely abbreviate operations that are sure but tiresome. Imaginative appeals of incident, if of degree, impart intensity which prolonged narration would inevitably defeat. Imaginative appeals should be distinguished, technically, from Signs. A sign proves the existence of some quality or cause. It is in nature logical only, and occasions an intellectual rather than an emotional or imaginative inference. We prognosti- cate changes of the weather by signs, which, however, if we have friends in exposure, or crops to spoil, become imaginative appeals of incident. The spots of typhus may, to the over- worked physician, be merely signs, but will be infinitely more than signs to the patient and his family. An alarm of fire is perhaps never a sign to the horses at the engine house, or to the firemen, or to anybody. It is not a signal, but an alarm indeed, a sheer appeal to imagination, a call for help against a public enemy. Badges are often signs. But the Iron or the Victoria Cross is something more. It is, typically, and it is designed to be, an appeal of incident, in degree, to imagination. NARRATION BY IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE 243 EXERCISES 1. Show how you have lately used, inadvertently, an imagina- tive appeal of incident in reporting some experience or event. Present this in proper literary form. 2. Report a similar example from your recent reading. 3. Recall from observation some experience or incident that seems to require treatment in the Cause manner, and make the study. 4. Bring back to mind similarly matters that can best be pre- sented in the Effect way, and present these in literary form. 5. What striking examples of character ‘appeals’ have been noted since studies in direct characterization were finished? Pre- pare two of these as fresh studies in personality. 6. What notable illustrations of narration, in any of the six forms, have been observed in recent reading? Make a critical appreciation or comparison of these. 7. Describe, from cut in Webster’s International Dictionary, the musical instrument known as the crowd. 8. Recall some happening that calls for an incident appeal of degree to express it, and give the treatment. g. In contrast with this, present an incident that requires, to communicate it, an imaginative appeal of kind. to. Show, by an example from Robinson Crusoe, how Defoe uses imaginative appeals of incident as the means of narration. 11. Report similarly, by examples from The Black Arrow, what use Stevenson makes of the same expedient. 12. What author lately read seems to show the most and strongest “taking” qualities? In three or four paragraphs of criticism and appreciation, discuss and give reasons. CHAPTER XXIV DESCRIPTION BY NARRATION T is evident, from studies in earlier chapters, that the atten- tion of the reader is taxed less seriously in narration than in description. Narration has movement, and progress, and these assist the fancy. But a description involving several elements, to be kept in fixity while further details are added, will hardly be effective unless assisted co-operatively by the imaging powers of the person or audience addressed. Some art is therefore needed to make a long or complex de- scription “taking.” In fact, treatments less detailed will often necessitate the importation of interest from outside the theme. We must add to the task of describing a natural bridge or a colonial farmstead the larger one of beguiling the time and keeping our reader from the expectation of being bored or burdened. The whole must indeed be done before he has be- come aware of our effort or his own. Our attention will be more readily engaged if the object to be presented can be shown progressively, in the important steps or stages of construction. We can describe the queer spectacles in use a century ago by narrating how the maker, beginning with rectangular lenses, cut the four corners of each octagonally, and mounted them with a silver frame and bows of squared wire, the ends of the bows being each bent and soldered into a small loop. We can present the appearance of an old black-letter Bible through mention of its having been bound literally in boards, planed and bevelled in a join- er’s shop, with the marks of the dull tool still showing on the wood where the brown leather, drawn tightly over the edges, has been worn away at the corners and next the brazen clasps. Or, we can hold the reader’s thought to the description of the horse-chestnut blossom by narrating how, in a vitagraphic rep- resentation of its growth, it appears first as a flesh-white bud, 244 DESCRIPTION BY NARRATION 245 shaped like the fingers of a hand gathered about the thumb, which quickly opens, bends backward, and swells into a form resembling a cluster of hyacinth flowers. When the object to be presented is large, the Process Method is still more economic of the reader’s mental energy. A de- scription of the tunnels under the Hudson and the Detroit River would be hard to follow if undertaken in the usual meticulous and complicated way. Presented by parts, and narrated in the process of combining the parts into a whole, they are not so taxing. The product, besides, will remain longer and more vividly in memory. The manner of treatment would be after this sort: In the work of tunneling the 2600 feet between the shores of the Detroit River, the first task was to dredge out a trench, forty-five feet below the bed of the channel, and then to drive piles at the bottom of the excavation. On the piles as a foundation, double tubes of steel, each twenty-three feet in diameter, and in sections 260 feet long, were sunk, and bolted together by divers. Each section of these double tubes was now enclosed in concrete and cov- ered with clay and broken stones, until all of the ten sec- tions had been made solid under the swift current of the river. The interior of each tube was next encased in cement, and squared to the proportions necessary for the passage of railway trains.1 Really no other than the process manner could have been employed successfully here, and the report of the engineers remains the best description of the product. The method is as old as the literature of the race, and comes down to us per- haps from an age much earlier. It is essentially the manner in which Homer (Iliad IV. 105-111) described to his listeners the bow of Pandarus: Straightway he unsheathed his polished bow made from the horns of a fleet wild goat which, issuing from a rock, 1 This paragraph is clearly an example of Narration, being a detailed state- ment of steps or stages in an actual construction. To make it over into a specimen of Explanation. we should need to exchange facts for suggestions, to alter the history into a letter of directions. The vital part of the opening sen- tence would then run, “The first task would be to dredge out,” etc. So of the quotation below, from Homer, which some critics would classify as a plain case of ‘‘Exposition.” 246 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY he had himself, lying once upon a time in wait, smitten and hit upon the breast, so that it fell backward along the rock. From its head were grown horns of sixteen palms in length; and these the artificer fitted together skil- fully, polished well the whole, and set on it a tip of gold. While it is by no means clear that Homer intended the passage to serve the purpose claimed for it (Laocoon, XVI) by Lessing, the principle used in it is true. The audience addressed was undoubtedly familiar with this sort of bow, and did not need to have it “described” for knowledge. The passage of course 1s valueless as description to those unacquainted with the shape of the horns, since, without knowledge of the type- lines which they express, it is impossible to conceive the product formed from them. Scholars indeed are by no means agreed as to the species of goat from which the horns were taken. Moreover, as an example of the process-mode, it is unsatisfy- ing, since the author does not enlighten us as to the means by which the horns were “fitted together” with requisite firm- ness, or where the maker “set” the tip of gold. But the method, even if the product be profitless, compels the attention and in- terest of the reader. Homer’s description of the shield forged by Hephaistos (Iliad XVII. 468-608), for Achilles, is a much more defective illustration of the process-manner, since in no particular is the execution of the marvel detailed to us. We see how the method of narrating the construction can be used in describing many objects that must often be pre- sented, and perhaps explained, without picture or model. So might be made clear to the unmechanical mind, the instruments of wireless telegraphy, or forms of the aeroplane, by giving the history and combination of appliances. This, we recognize, is sometimes the method of the popular lecturer. Another manner of inveigling attention, and of lightening the burden of those who read by force of will, may be called the Historical. Any means by which the mind is held to an object until imagination has done its utmost of realization, is good to use. By the method of history, Homer, in speaking of Agamemnon’s sceptre (Iliad II. 100-109), exalts the adversary of his hero by investing him with an emblem of sovereign power that has been borne by Zeus himself: DESCRIPTION BY NARRATION 247 Then stood up Lord Agamemnon holding his sceptre, the one that Hephaistos had wrought curiously. Hephaistos had given it to Zeus sovereign son of Kronos, and Zeus in turn gave it to the Argos-slayer, messenger of the gods. And King Hermes gave it to Pelops the driver of steeds, but Pelops gave it to Atreus shepherd of hosts. And Atreus dying left it to Thyestes rich in flocks, and Thy- estes in turn left it for Agamemnon to wield, that, over many islands and all Argos, he might be lord. Here again nothing is told concerning the size or carving of the instrument, since a sceptre must have been a familiar object to audiences of the time. But, while no hint of appearance is given, the mind is held upon what it is forced to picture, and with increasing interest,—at least in the minds of Homeric hearers, until the object is wholly individualized and fixed. The modern manner of presenting subjects for description as having been in some sort of relation with noted or historic personages is not different in nature from the last example. The device is potent in the presentation of smaller as well as of larger objects. The description of a dress sword as a slender, grooved, three-cornered blade, in a white scabbard, with the flat hilt covered, on two sides, with mother-of-pearl plates, is assisted by imagination when we are told that it was once worn by the First Napoleon on state occasions. Haw- thorne often uses the historic method in this form. The fol- lowing, from “Howe’s Masquerade” (Twice Told Tales, p. 272), is a characteristic illustration: The cupola is an octagon, with several windows, and a door opening upon the roof. From this station, as I pleased myself with imagining, Gage may have beheld his disastrous victory on Bunker Hill—unless one of the tri-mountains intervened—and Howe have marked the approaches of Washington’s besieging army; although the buildings since erected in the vicinity have shut out almost every object, save the steeple of the Old South, which seems almost within arm’s length. Descending from the cupola, I paused in the garret to observe the ponder- ous white-oak framework, so much more massive than the frames of modern houses, and thereby resembling an antique skeleton. The brick walls, the materials of which were imported from Holland, and the timbers of the man- sion, are still as sound as ever. 248 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY It is remarkable how various are the allusions that the author has managed to group together in this passage. That he was in some degree aware of the art and method he was using appears probable from his qualifying parenthesis concerning Gage. It seems certain that Bunker Hill was not in sight from the Province House, more than were Washington’s movements, behind Beacon Hill, in and about Cambridge. The personal turn is another of Hawthorne’s secrets. No writer of his time better understood the help to fancy of making a reader look through another’s eyes. When a subject is too complex or tremendous to be ade- quately treated, without division, it can be presented in prac- ticable parts incidentally while the author narrates the manner of his coming into acquaintance with each one. To illustrate this crowning mode, we shall study the first chapter of De Amicis’s Constantinople. No problem in the whole field of description is more intricate or greater. Men of rare fame had attempted the task with varying success. De Amicis, with their results before him, and despairing of power to hold the reader to the infinite array of particulars, uses pretended nar- ration, while really describing all that can be told. To make us realize the rest, he presents, most daringly and potently of all, the sentiments and experiences that possess him as his ship approaches and enters the Golden Horn. All of De Amicis’s writings are intensely personal, and he begins (p. 318) with using his personality to arouse the reader, and make him more agog over Constantinople, for his author’s sake, than for his own. This purpose governs through the first three paragraphs. In the fourth and the fifth, De Amicis enlarges upon the coming spectacle, and quotes the praises of its glory from other enthusiasts, including the sailors of his ship, who have preceded him. At what hour De Amicis, on his own visit, entered Con- stantinople, we do not know. He chooses, very acutely, to bring his readers to it in the morning. Holding us with this expectation, he proceeds in his next paragraph (pp. 320, 321) to present to us his companions, and gives us, in the one fol- lowing, the mood of the company and of the hour. Then, still more ingeniously, he makes his approach to the city (p. 322), DESCRIPTION BY NARRATION 249 after sunrise, to have been enshrouded in fog. This irks us, adding to the momentum of our interest by delay. Expecting to carry us easily by this purpose, the author adventures de- tailing, in two deliberate paragraphs, the configuration of the city and its environs. This finished, he permits us (p. 324) our first glimpse of Stamboul. The plan of showing single views, or parts of views, through openings in the fog, is most artistic and effectual. We can best join elements together when presented thus separately and slowly. This plan is carried forward until the author be- gins to adjust and settle the other cities (p. 327) in our thought. This done, he comes back to the main task, for which he prepares us (p. 328) while the ship is halted. The climax is thus approached, in the manner of narration, until we reach and grow into the final scene. Here the crowning paragraph (pp. 329-331), on which the author spends his utmost of strength and skill, begins and ends in the personal mode. The author can only confess to the causal influences that oppress him, and then leaves the case, so to speak, on our literary con- science. He manages the descent from his climax by making us observe, in a paragraph of five lines, the emotion of his companions. Even the impassive English clergyman, whom we suspect he has included in the company for this very pur- pose, has at last parted with his insensibility, and murmurs, though for his own ear only, “Wonderful! Wonderful!’ Then, by a logical close, the author leaves with us the scene and story. With examples from such masters before us, we should not find it difficult to devise means for lightening the products of our studies in description. It may be well, at first, to express the necessary meanings plainly and completely, without much reference to length of treatment. We should then rewrite, suppressing unessential parts, and clarifying, and embodying expedients to hold the attention and utilize the interest of the most indifferent reader. 250 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY EXERCISES 1. Describe, by the Process Method, a telephone, or an auto- mobile, or some other object, as to a reader ignorant of its looks or use. 2. Describe, in the same manner, an oriental rug. 3. Describe, using its history, a Guarnerius violin. Or, indi- vidualize and establish in the mind of the reader, by the same means, some object of like age and value. 4. Describe, by showing stages in its growth, your own city or village. 5. Describe, using the third form of narration, some village or hamlet that you have visited. Make the study by the method of De Amicis. 6. Report and discuss two examples, one from Dickens and one from Motley, of description by narration. 7. Report and compare two similar examples, from standard magazines of the day, of description by narration. 8. Instance some example from one of your text-books or reference books on history, of description by the method of history. g. Describe, by form-types, the safety chain. 10. Describe, in the personal or casual manner of narration, some large or historic city that you have at some time visited. CHAPTER XXV DESCRIPTION WITH MYSTIC TYPE yee may be literal, or idealistic. It may in- spire the reader to construct scenes or objects, with or- dinary employment of imagination, which the author has seen or feigns to see. It may do more than this, by adding some hint or element of the ideal, thus making the reader supply the best from his own fancy. We must, of course, tell the outside truth in description. We must ensure a clear conception of lines and angles, of propor- tions and color, as the fundamental part of our task. We may be content to do this only, and it is often all that should be done. But there is a spirit, a genius, in everything, and art and ar- tists attempt to make the material part of their work, which is, so to speak, the body, suggest the soul. They enable the ob- server, even if unskilled in judging pictures or other works of art, to catch something of the higher meanings. Artistic de- scription, similarly, enforces through outer aspects some sense and recognition of the spirit behind the form. It is the purpose of art, of whatsoever rank, to assist per- ception and appreciation of the inner, informing element. The professional sculptor expresses the spirit of the dawn, of war, of charity, in symbolic shapes. Popular artists represent the genius of the British race by the figure of John Bull, of our country by Uncle Sam, of old-time China by an almond-eyed maid with infant feet. These are all, as we say, personifica- tions; but they are formed by the instinct to realize the genius in each case more palpably. They are spiritualizations severally of a vast and otherwise unmanageable material reality. An easy expedient for utilizing the spirit of things, in de- scription, is to effect the suggestion of some mood which will imply it. The genius of the scene or moment will be signified 251 252 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY through personification. Here is an example, from Bleak House, of the simpler sort: Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows: fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great—and dirty—city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheez- ing by the fireside of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little *~prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the clouds. This begins and ends with fog, and nothing but the material side and substance of the phenomenon is presented. But there is something more than a material conception carried by the words. There is mood in it, and there is spirit in it, which though vague, are yet indubitable, actual. The picture ends, without climax or variation, as it began. Buta description, im- parting the same mood, may stop, like a mounting rocket, with a burst of the visual into a more ethereal element. Let us com- pare a description, of the same fog—also at the opening of a story—from Barrie’s Tommy and Grigzel: Outside, the fog kept changing at intervals from black to white, as lazily from white to black—the monster blink- ing—there was not a sound from the street save of pedes- trians tapping with their sticks as they moved forward warily, afraid of an embrace with the unknown. Mrs. Browning, more felicitously (Aurora Leigh III. 178- 181), makes us supply the thought of a formless monster as the genius of the phenomenon: Or I saw Fog only, the great tawny weltering fog, Involve the passive city, strangle it Alive and draw it off into the void. DESCRIPTION WITH MYSTIC TYPE 253 Hawthorne is eminent in such refinements of description. The genius of everything he essays seems with him when he writes, and looks out from his pages. At times he appeals directly to the mystic and impalpable; as in his Mosses from an Old Manse, p. 25: All day long, and for a week together, the rain was drip- drip-dripping and splash-splash-splashing from the eaves, and bubbling and foaming into the tubs beneath the spouts. The old, unpainted shingles of the house and out-buildings were black with moisture; and the mosses of ancient growth upon the walls looked green and fresh, as if they were the newest things and afterthoughts of Time. The usually mirrored surface of the river was blurred by an infinity of raindrops; the whole landscape had a completely water-soaked appearance, conveying the impression that the earth was wet through like a sponge; while the summit of a wooded hill, about a mile distant, was enveloped in a dense mist, where the demon of the tempest seemed to have his abiding place, and to be plotting still direr in- clemencies. The whole passage, up to the beginning of the last clause, is essentially literal, being what the photographer turned poet would try to say. But Hawthorne is a painter, as well as a poet, and by what he adds at the end lifts the whole over into the realms of fancy. It is clear that the means used to spiritualize the scenes considered are type elements, but type elements of a mystic kind. They are typical because they are distinct and constant. They are mystical because we cannot know them, as we know varieties of form and movement, finally and completely. The presiding genius of Hawthorne’s tempest belongs to the group of demons who, according to medizval theories, triumphed now and then for a season over the angels of good weather, and strove to make their mischief perpetual. We readily visualize the monster spirit here inhabiting the fog as a demon, of the old belief, who is contriving discomfort and jeopardy against mankind. While we no longer believe in the dualism of the middle ages, which assigned to every child, and church, and nation, a good ~ 254 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY and an evil genius always in warfare over its respective destiny, we find ourselves reviving it, for literary reasons, now and then. Another theory of meteorology, as well as of the in- dividual and of society, has usurped its place. But there lingers perhaps with us an inherited memory of the old superstitions, which, when we are in search of means to ensure clearness and takingness, obtrudes its helps upon us. We are also likely to resort to it when we wish to refine our thought, or raise our reader’s fancy to the level of high or mystic seriousness. Here is a later example (Harper's, Vol. 145, pp. 187, 188) by Dallas Lore Sharp: In the big woods one is ever conscious of direction, a sense that is so exaggerated in the deepest bottoms, espe- cially when only indirect, diffused light fills the shadowy spaces, as to border on fear. [I am never free, in a strange forest, from its haunting Presence; so close to it that I seem to hear it; seem able to touch it; and when, for a moment of some minor interest or excitement, I have forgotten to remember and, looking up, find the Presence gone from me, I am seized with sudden fright. What other panic comes so softly, yet with more terrible swiift- ness? And once the maze seizes you, once you begin to meet yourself, find yourself running the circle of your back tracks, the whole mind goes to pieces and madness is upon you. “Set where you be and holler till I come get ye, if ye’re lost,” the guide would say. “Climb a tree and holler; don’t run around like a side-hill gouger, or you’re gone.” I do not know what sort of animal is Johnny’s side-hill gouger; though I saw, one day, far up on the side of the mountain a big bare spot where he had been digging —according to the guide. It is enough for me that there is such a beast in the woods, and that he gets those who turn round and round in the forest on rainy days and forget to look up. The gouger was abroad in the woods to-day. The clouds hung at the base of the mountains, just above the tops of the trees; the rain came straight down; the huge fallen trunks lay everywhere criss-cross; and once beyond the path to the spring the semi-gloom blurred every trail and put at naught all certainty of direction. But how this fear sharpened the senses and quickened everything in the scene about me. I was in the neighborhood of danger, and every dull and dormant faculty became alert. Nothing would DESCRIPTION WITH MYSTIC TYPE 255 come from among the dusky trees to harm me; no bear, or lynx, or moose, for they would run away; it was the dusk itself, and the big trees that would not run away; and I watched them furtively as they drew nearer and nearer and closed in deeper about me. There are thus ancient spiritual types and notions which, dis- carded by the philosophy of the day, have become fanciful. We have new types of goodness and malevolence, of the sublime and of beauty, which are not mystical, but explicit. But we cultivate vagueness and incertitude at times concerning even these. The great masters of description use types of the high- est verities, to ensure vividness, incidentally, and leave imagina- tion to complete conceptions partially suggested or implied. Ruskin effects his interpretation of the sublime, in certain of Turner’s studies, largely by this means. This is the climax in his impressive description (Modern Painters, V, vii, 1) of clouds : Or those war-clouds that gather on the horizon, dragon- crested, tongued with fire; how is their barbed strength bridled? What bits are these they are champing with their vaporous lips; flinging off flakes of black foam? Leagued leviathans of the Sea of Heaven, out of their nostrils goeth smoke, and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning; the sword of him that layeth at them can- not hold the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. Where rideth the captains of their armies? Where are set the measures of their march? Fierce murmurers, answering each other from morning until evening—what rebuke is this which has awed them into peace—what hand has reined them back by the way by which they came? This, we note, is in the vein of the hundred and fourth psalm, and the last verses of Chapter XX XIX in The Book of Job, which Ruskin doubtless memorized, under his mother’s tutelage, in his boyhood. On passages like these as models, his remarkable style was formed. With types of the beautiful, mystically applied, he contrasts (V, vii, 4) the southern slopes of the Alps, visited by gentle precipitations of vapor from the Mediterranean, with the parched river valleys and plains below: * 256 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY The great Angel of the Sea—rain; the Angel, observe, the messenger sent to a special place on a special errand. Not the diffused perpetual presence of the burden of mist, but the going and returning of intermittent cloud. All turns upon that intermittence. Soft moss on stone and rock; cave-fern of tangled glen; wayside well—perennial, patient, silent, clear; stealing through its square font of rough-hewn stone; ever thus deep—no more—which the winter wreck sullies not, the summer thirst wastes not, in- capable of stain as of decline—where the fallen leaf floats undecayed, and the insect darts undefiling. Cressed brook and ever-eddying river, lifted even in flood scarcely over its stepping-stones,—but through all sweet summer keep- ing tremulous music with harp-strings of dark water among the silver fingering of the pebbles. Far away in the south the strong river Gods have all hasted, and gone down to the sea. Wasted and burning, white furnaces of blasting sand, their broad beds lie ghastly and bare. But here the soft wings of the Sea Angel droop still with dew, and the shadows of their plumes falter on the hills: strange laughings, and glitterings of silver streamlets, born suddenly, and twined about the mossy heights in trickling tinsel, answering to them as they wave. Studies of moods in nature, such as artists paint from land- scapes and evening scenes, abound in literature and assist the theme in hand. Here is one of a September morning in New England: It is ten o’clock, yet nature is still motionless, as if in doubt what were best to do. The sky is filmed with ridgy clouds, which do not pass, and there is not a breath of wind. I can hear children’s voices from unseen homes, seemingly miles away, and the dreamy crowing of cocks. From the hidden roadway below I note a faint rumbling, but find myself unable to conceive it caused by other than phantom wheels. This is a mood-description of dawn in the forest mountains of Carinthia, by Meredith, from (Chapter IV) The Amazing Marriage: Meanwhile the high wind had sunk; the moon, after pushing her withered half to the zenith, was climbing the dusky edge, revealed fitfully; threads and wisps of thin DESCRIPTION WITH MYSTIC TYPE 257 vapor travelled along a falling gale, and branched from the dome of the sky in migratory broken lines, like wild birds shifting the order of flight, north and east, where they sat in a web, but as yet had done no more than shoot up a glow along the central heavens, in amid the waves of deepened cloud; a mirror for night to see her dark self in her own hue. A shiver between the silent couple pricked their wits, and she said: “Chillon, shall we run out and call the morning?” The effect of description is often assisted, if, as in the ex- ample from Bleak House, the use of verbs is for the most part intermitted. Predication belongs to thought, and serves as the “eureka,” when truth is sighted, of the mind. It is a need- ful expedient when we desire to express a determined fact, a deliberate judgment, or a conviction. It is the “attest” of personality, or of the soul. But when we wish to present a picture strongly, and ensure its takingness by use of the mood it carries, we often find it more natural to mention the forma- tive parts instead of affirming them. We occasionally come upon passages that illustrate this ideally, like the following from Chaplin’s Five Hundred Dollars, p. 137: Wide wastes of salt-marsh to the right, imprisoning the upland with a vain promise of infinite liberty, and, be- tween low, distant sand-hills, a rim of sea. Stretches of pine woods behind, shutting in from the great world, and soon to darken into evening gloom. Ploughed fields and elm-dotted pastures to the left, and birch-lined roads lead- ing by white farmhouses to the village, all speaking of cheer and freedom to the prosperous and happy, but to the unfortunate and the indebted, of meshes invisible but strong as steel. But, before, no lonesome marshes, no desolate forest, no farm or village street, but the free blue ocean, rolling and tumbling still from the force of an unexpended gale. This opening paragraph of an article in the Outlook (Novem- ber 22, 1916), by Gregory Mason, is an excellent example of the same manner: A long band of yellow cutting the equal blue of sea and sky. A thin crust of green along the upper edge of 258 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY the yellow. Here and there the white speck of building, and the single warning finger of a lighthouse. That is Yucatan from the steamer anchorage of Progreso. Finally, all moods in nature seem to involve a mystic element. This is due perhaps as much to our inner consciousness of infinite and unfathomable force, at large, as to the influence of real mysteries severally discerned. The most ordinary ap- peals to our sense of the sublime inspire visualizing effects, whether in narration, description or exposition. Tennyson best understands this secret of literary power: As from beyond the limit of the world. ... and far away The phantom circle of a moaning sea, Nigh upon that hour When the lone hern forgets his melancholy. And there, that day when the great light of heaven Burn’d at his lowest in the rolling year. Ruskin has said that no description of his is worth four lines of Tennyson. The touch of art that has won such praise seems to lie in the fact that Tennyson begins by appealing to our sense of the sublime directly, while Ruskin relies upon details of form and color to arouse the sentiment desired. Tennyson easily makes a single line inspire a picture, as well as impart a consciousness of its spirit: The long low dune, and lazy plunging sea. When all night long a cloud clings to a hill. Where falls not rain or hail or any snow. And on a sudden, lo, the level lake, And the long glories of the winter moon. EXERCISES 1, Make a description of some river scene or of a lake, with use of the sentiment or mood that it has inspired in you, and that should prove attractive to your reader. DESCRIPTION WITH MYSTIC TYPE 259 2. Read Tennyson’s Passing of Arthur, and copy the lines carry- ing forceful imagery and mood. Try expanding one of these into a formally complete description. 3. Make a mood study of some June morning that you remem- ber vividly. 4. Present the mood that you imagine prevails during a total eclipse of the sun. Describe, from memory or imagination, the appearance of the landscape and the sky as the eclipse progresses. 5. Narrate the circumstances of your visit to a prison, adding some description by way of the experiences occasioned. 6. Frame a description of French’s statue of Lincoln, by use of the sentiment suggested in the pose and face. 7. Recall a place, at some time visited, that has inspired strong feeling. Describe by way of or by use of this feeling. 8. Make a brief description of some great public building that has impressed you, putting this sentiment to use. Attach a para- graph concerning the influence of architecture upon a community or city. g. Narrate, by the personal method, and with some use of de- scription by mood, any mysterious incident of which you may have had personal knowledge. to. Make a character study of some strong personality met with since last studies upon this topic. 11. Report any remarkable appeals of mood noted since study of Chapter XX. 12. Suggest the effects experienced on approach to a great and unknown city in the night. Show whether these might be util- ized in literary handling, and how. CHAPTER XXVI NARRATION BY EXPOSITION E must next inquire how matter-of-fact meanings may Y be made effective and vivid through being expressed by means that will connect them with something nobler and higher. It is instinctive with us to tell a fact by way of a principle, to express the particular by the general, the smaller by the greater, either for brevity and completeness, or for incidental or other imaginative enlargement. We do not feel the impulse to do this in all instances, yet we shun literalness with sur- prising frequency. Instead of the remark, “You have not been to see us lately,” the English-speaking folks-at-home have long preferred the phrase, “You are quite a stranger.” To avoid the tameness of saying, “It is spring again,” we dignify the fact by couching it in its cause or principle,—“The sun is mov- ing north.” In order not to specify, when importuned to join some junketing party, that our work is especially pressing, we are likely to answer, merely, “Business before pleasure,” or “Duty is duty always.” Besides stock locutions of this kind, there are numerous maxims and proverbs which are made to serve similarly as evasions. The stereotyped and shallow wis- dom of such formulas is less intolerable than the dull utterances that they replace. But expressions of the latter class are used but reluctantly and seldom by the most of us. The personal substitutions which we severally invent on the spur of the moment, and as soon forget, are the real index of our aversion to literal forms. Some one of us has rendered, supposably, a considerable service. In revolt against the triteness and insufficiency of bald thanks, the recipient will muster up some new phrase of appreciation, such as, “This is new knight-errantry,” “This is vassalage,” or, perhaps, in the exaggerated language of com- 260 NARRATION BY EXPOSITION 261 pliment, “sheer immolation.” To deprecate the acknowledg- ment, the one addressed will reply,—not with the worn-out formulary, itself unliteral, “You are welcome,” but with some- thing, if it can be hit upon, of finer civility, as, “Rather was it a distinction,’ “It was my good fortune,” “It was super- merited.” So generally, to avoid crassness in making requests, business overtures, proposals of marriage, and the like, the world at large contrives to cover naked literalness with some appropriate generic garb. We aim thus at takingness and effectiveness in oral speech. The makers of literature, working from the same instincts, do this more delicately or strongly. Opening at almost any page of distinguished writing, we come upon artistic and striking illustrations : No birds out of that cover—The age in him held out secret hands to the age in her—against rebellious and en- croaching youth.—He had thus worn westward, leaving a deeply striated human surface behind him, in the line of the New England emigration, as far as to the farther border of Iowa.—Down this coast there ebbed and flowed a life of violence and dishonesty, peddling trades, ven- dettas and war.—All over the lady’s hands, barely to be seen, were the marks of life’s experience, the delicate and dread sculptures of adversity—From Venice hitherward he marked with cumulative effect the clustering evidences of effort and power crumbled to nothingness.——It just happened that in the very moment when the edifice of this noble resolution had been ready, she had stepped into it, out of nothingness and nowhere. It would be an illuminating exercise to attempt turning these quotations into the plain fact-statements which they transfigure. We should discover how much of what is said by indirections cannot be expressed in a literal paraphrase. In the first ex- ample, the speaker has been trying unsuccessfully to elicit from a young lady some sign as to possible interest in a young man he knows. In the second, two elderly folk get into sympathy each with each against the younger generation which seems to be pushing them off the stage. In the third, we have the summarized career of a seminary-made minister, as he is “shifted from the aching shoulders” of successive congrega- 262 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY tions—and so on. So there are amenities sought for in thought and speech beyond the range of mere evasions. As was noted in our studies of exposition, it is native with us to gravitate towards finalities even in common talk. Nobody holds himself down, save for the instant, to mere facts. The inmost part of us, the proper self, is prevailingly and preferringly imaginative, and philosophical, or, as usually expressed together in one word, spiritual. When we examine the locutions of the kind in question that we read or hear, we discover that there are three ways of saying common or other things. One is of course the Literal or Fact way, which is least satisfying, as—to repeat a former example —It was the spring of the year. If we wish to express this less baldly, we may employ either of two expedients. The first of these we may call the Thought or Philosophic way, since we imply a fact through the laws or reasons that have produced it; as in this case, The sun was climbing north again. The other is the Imaginative or Feeling way, by which we indi- cate a fact by setting up a lively picture of conditions sur- rounding the fact; as here of the outside world in full spring- time: The swallows came back from the south, the wild geese flew honking northward, and the grass broke green again from the sere fields. It is helpful to realize that we may select the one or the other of these ways that will best suit the mood or purpose of the moment. In fact that is what, more or less instinctively, most sane minds do. It is well to be so advised that we can add the element of consciousness when there is need. To do this is to join art with science. It is even more important, in deliberate writing, to keep aware that we can dignify even matters as seemingly insignificant as the time of day, or month, or year, by use of the Thought, or the Feeling Form. If one should wish to say “inside of a fortnight,” in a more exalted vein, one might imply it through changes of the moon. If there were need of verse, one might venture,— Then ere the new moon had increas’d to full. Or should he elect, instead, the method of imagination, he } NARRATION BY EXPOSITION 263 would probably bethink himself in time of Tennyson’s experi- ment,— Then ere the silver sickle of that month Became her golden shield,— and not try titles with him. Surely this example seems to reach the limit to which the creative fancy is like to go. For here of course the author personifies the given month over into a Minerva-like or Ceres-like figure, who appears first in state, before us, holding a sickle of silver, but before her second theophany has exchanged it for a shield of gold. Tennyson’s resources were better husbanded when, to signify in the Feel- ing way a long watch in the night, he wrote: I pac’d the terrace till the Bear had wheel’d Through a great arc his seven slow suns. As was noted (p. 170) in Chapter XVII, we experience two distinct reactions in response to imaginative appeals of per- sonality. In one we discern and appreciate Worth, in the other Nobility or Beauty of character. Normal minds under normal conditions are open to two main satisfactions, one called High Seriousness, brought on through reactions to Worth, the other, inspired from various amenities belonging to the Beautiful, and perhaps best designated as Delight. Both experiences come into existence in us together, and are distinguishable as parts of a whole, though one is always minor to the other. High Seriousness is the name properly to be applied to the frame of mind produced by ideas expressed in the Thought or Philo- sophic way, and Pleasure or Delight, to states incited by the Imaginative or Beauty way. High Seriousness from Worth rather than Delight from Beauty is the regnant principle in art and poetry, and it is with this that we have here to deal. Great paintings spring from and inspire high seriousness, and the like is true of great oratories and symphonies, and Gothic cathedrals. While paint- ings that tell a story are not in these days held in high esteem, the contrary may be affirmed of poetry and literature generally. 264 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY The truth of this could hardly be illustrated better than in the opening lines of The Holy Grail: From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done In tournament or tilt, Sir Percival, Whom Arthur and his knighthood call’d The Pure Had pass’d into the silent life of prayer, Praise, fast and alms. Here the plain fact sense is of course merely, “Sir Percival had gone into a monastery.” There is no high seriousness in the mind that could say just that, and in just that way. But there is high seriousness here, and there can be no question that it rises well nigh to the level of the sublime in poetry. We can delay longer only to remark that passages cast like this, in the Thought way, stand next to “imaginative appeals,” and should be set down in memory as the second, in power and value, of all the elements in literature. Minds motivated by high seriousness will employ themselves not only upon terms and phrases, in the thought or philosophi- cal vein, but on whole paragraphs and even volumes also. It is in such states of mind that meanings of things are made to do duty for the things, and that Exposition is substituted for plain Narration. When Coleridge assayed to speak of his unheedful and inconsequent literary career, he condensed the story into this remarkable passage: I have laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this wil- derness, the world, with ostrich carelessness and ostrich oblivion. The greater part indeed have been trod under foot, and are forgotten; but no small number have crept into life, some to furnish feathers for the caps of others, and still more to plume the shafts in the quivers of my enemies, of them that unprovoked have lain in wait against my soul. Here the author gives the substance of many specific para- graphs by use of a single developed figure. He states what by explaining how. He achieves and intensifies the effect of nar- ration by a process that is essentially exposition. A more specific summary of how this author had published articles and papers without deliberation, often forgetting both NARRATION BY EXPOSITION 265 the matter and the medium, and how some of his ideas had been plagiarized, and some used as a means of attack against himself, would have detailed more of his meaning, but com- pelled less intensive comprehension of it from the reader. His manner of communicating with us makes us realize his narra- tive in particulars which we ourselves in effect supply. We un- derstand and appreciate our own efforts better than another’s. By stimulating us to larger co-operation, Coleridge has lodged his faults and wrongs with us more tellingly and permanently. It will not be strange if we come upon minds natively fervid that affect moods of high seriousness, and persist in communi- cating events to be known by things to be felt, to an inordinate limit. Thus Carlyle attempts, not unsuccessfully, to present the tremendous facts of the French Revolution by an exegesis of what they signify. Philosopher rather than historian, he concerns himself more intimately with aspects than with action, and shows events through the vista of forces that compel them,—in all confidence that his public will supply details im- plied in the interpretation. Here is a common example (H1s- tory III. v) of his manner: Thus, however, has the reader seen, in an unexpected arena, on this last day of February, 1791, the Three long- contending elements of French Society dashed forth into singular comico-tragical collision; acting and reacting openly to the eye. Constitutionalism, at once quelling San- sculottic riot at Vincennes, and Royalist treachery in the Tuileries, is great this day, and prevails. As for poor Royalism, tossed to and fro in that manner, its daggers all left in a heap, what can one think of it? Every dog, the Adage says, has its day: has it; has had it: or will have it. For the present, the day is Lafayette’s and the Constitution’s. Nevertheless Hunger and Jacobinism, fast growing fanatical, still work; their day, were they once fanatical, will come. Hitherto, in all tempests, Lafay- ette, like some divine Sea-ruler, raises his serene head; the upper Afolus’ blasts fly back to their caves, like foolish unbidden winds; the under sea-billows they had vexed into froth allay themselves. But if, as we often write, the sub-marine Titanic Fire-powers came into play, the Ocean- bed from beneath being burst? If they hurled Poseidon Lafayette and his Constitution out of Space; and, in the Titanic melly, sea were mixed with sky? 266 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Of course the History of the French Revolution is not easy reading, and its wilful disregard of literary form distresses us. But Carlyle’s style, where harshest and most unnatural, is nowhere in itself obscure. What there is of difficulty here is due to the author’s vehement indirectness of mention or al- lusion. No other of his historical writings is cast in the same vein. It is well understood that plain, annalistic statements do not comport with strong emotion. Men in a mood of sublime seriousness over affairs make more effort to express the mood than the affairs. Macduff, coming from the chamber of King Duncan, uses language (Macbeth II. iti, 69-74) not more literal than Carlyle’s, and not easier to comprehend: Oh, horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart Cannot conceive nor name thee... . Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence The life o’ the building. Macduff’s consternation and horror leave the fact of Duncan’s murder, for the moment, in the shadow. Carlyle’s emotionalism over the wrongs and vengeance of a mighty people leaves the facts of their revolt in shadow through three whole volumes. Yet this rhapsodizing History fulfilled its purpose, and was widely read, even among the uneducated, in its generation. But this manner of exposition is at best overwrought, and too widely alien from the thought and speech of living men. It is a phase of literature to be pondered over rather than culti- vated. It is native to all minds, as we have seen, to rise to the levels of high seriousness and imagination. It is not native to tether one’s moods to either plane. What we find in the diction of the great conversers and letter writers is in the main to be accepted as indicating safe limits for the author. So sentences like these, from short bursts of inspiration, may stand for what the world accepts and subconsciously expects from approved writers of the day: The fact slowly worked back into her consciousness, wounding its way in. (Howells.) All day our sea lies NARRATION BY EXPOSITION 267 still, grey and sullen, just showing a fringe of white teeth near the shore. (Sale.) A spring of diamond water just bubbled into the moonlight beside them, then whimpered away through the bushes and long grass, in search of a neighboring mid-stream. (Hawthorne. ) We note that it is not difficult to distinguish the two attitudes or frames of mind that give rise to sentences like these. In one, our imaging powers are curbed, and kept at work accord- ing to a purpose. In the other, they have free range. We are often aware, although we pass from one to the other with- out pause, of the difference between these moods. When we listen to the report, perhaps of Amundsen’s expedition, we hold our minds, as he speaks of his tribulations, to the task of realiz- ing and picturing what is told. If the speaker begins quoting without notice some passage from the Earthly Paradise or the Ancient Mariner, we go on with him for a line or two, keeping imagination in harness just as before. But the instant we perceive that he has changed his mood and is voicing poetry, we stop imaging according to the letter of directions and leave imagination free. We were before trying to realize, and know the truth exactly. We now renounce all obligation of actuality, and let fancy picture what it will. We rest from duty, and give ourselves up to diversion and delight. The evident means by which ideas are expressed, in the philosophic and the feeling vein, are Figures. As was seen in Chapter VII, we constantly borrow a whole object for the sake of using a single element of its looks or content. We say “gambrel,” which is the leg of a horse, when we mean only the angle in its form. We are prompted perhaps to call some man a fox and thus assign him spiritually for the moment to the class of foxes, when we visualize him as in cunning more fox than man. The word standing for the interpreting object or idea is called a Metaphor. It may be either the subject of a sentence, as Jack Frost whitens the window panes, or the predicate, as the frost paints the windows. When both the subject and the predicate are metaphors, the result is Allegory; as in Jack Frost paints the windows. Here the thing to be felt is put for the meaning to be known. This is the typical and complete modus of narration by exposition. 268 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY In the beginnings of modern literature, allegory was a com- mon way of casting ordinary happenings in literary form. In the fourteenth century the presumption still prevailed that but few matters were in themselves sufficient to bear recounting, and therefore required that the refinement of a spiritualizing form should be superadded. It was then that Boccaccio set the daring example of telling a story as a story, and letting the content rather than the manner justify the outcome. Alle- gory soon passed out of fashion, at least in large units like the Divine Comedy, as a literary formulary. But in ordinary discourse, oral and literary, it kept the place it had held be- fore, and still holds to-day. In fact, there is probably as much tendency to allegorize, in low units, as there ever was. It is interesting to watch how the forms come out, in every walk of life, as the most natural thing in the world: He would buy books, even while the wolf was scratching on the door.—In comes Mr. Retailer and binds and gags both producer and consumer.—Venus was hunting Adonis all over the place—Uncle Sam speaks soft, but doesn’t carry a big stick.—She is the Dutch-Cleanser woman in- carnate, chasing dirt all over the house—The British, if they aren’t wise, will kill the goose that lays the rubber eggs. And in deliberate literature, old-fashioned allegory creeps in before one is aware. Mrs. Wharton not long ago gave us (Ethan Frome, p. 9) this rather remarkable illustration: When the storms of February had pitched their white tents and the wild cavalry of March winds had charged down to their support, I began to understand why_Stark- field emerged from its six months’ siege like a starved gar- | rison capitulating without quarter. Here, of course, the spiritualization is not complete. The phrases “of February,” “of March winds,” tie the vision to reality, yet do not prevent visualized personification in the sub- ject of either clause. But speakers and writers incline much more to metaphors than allegory, and are found in general to finish with the NARRATION BY EXPOSITION 269 borrowed notion in a single clause or period. When the figure is extended through successive sentences, as in the passage from Coleridge, we have a form which may be distinguished as Extended Metaphor. In this we note that the succession of metaphors attaches to the predicate side of the illustrations severally, since the subject of each narrative unit remains the literal personality of the writer and is represented by “I” throughout. If Coleridge had introduced himself under some generic name—feigning himself for instance as the ostrich whose habits of life he borrows—he could have wrought his story, though of course even less elegantly—into an allegory worthy of Chaucer’s age. On the other hand, the Pilgrim’s Progress might have been reduced from allegory to extended metaphor by such rewriting as would substitute the name of the author, or the pronoun of the first person, as the hero of the story. The author was writing the spiritual history of John Bunyan, but universalized it through representing him- self by “Christian” as a type. He narrates the personal inci- dents of his new religious life by expounding and illustrating the general doctrines of grace and faith. Powerful effects may also be wrought by similes and com- parisons, as introduced by as, and like, and than. One might have supposed these words used generally in expressions of kind: “like as a father”; “like no known example”; “like calumny.” But they are incessantly employed, at least col- loquially, as means of suggesting degree: “wise as serpents”; “like lightning” ; “dead as dust”; “sterner than pain” ; “tenderer than pity.” Similes proper in form may be used improperly, outside of colloquial and profane phrases, with tremendous effect, as here from Hermann Hagedorn’s interpretation of the Miserendino bust of Roosevelt: He was found faithful over a few things and he was made ruler over many; he cut his own trail clean and straight and millions followed him toward the light. He was frail; he made himself a tower of strength. He was timid; he made himself a lion of courage. He was a dreamer; he became one of the great doers of all Hime. wus He broke a nation’s slumber with his cry, and it rose 270 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY up. He touched the eyes of blind men with flame and gave them vision. Souls became swords through him; swords became servants of God. He was terrible in battle, but tender to the weak, joy- ous and tireless, being free from self-pity; clean with cleanness that cleansed the air like a gale... . Cleansed the air like a gale! Of course a gale does not cleanse the air, but displaces it. Yet what a phrase, what power comes with it! How may one learn to write like that, —like the new school of authorship in America and England ? It can come only from full seeing and keen emotion. Any inherited idea that similes and metaphors are to be sought for and engrafted as an embellishment must be rooted up out of one’s consciousness. Figures come of themselves as they came to this writer here. Watch men who are in real earnest when they speak. They know not what they do until they do it. Out of their inmost selves rise deep feelings, and the feelings in- spire the utterance, the figures. It should now be clear why detailed allegory of any sort is no longer an acceptable form of either narration or exposition. To the public sense the notion of a seriously or formally per- sonified type is ludicrous and provocative of burlesque. As we have seen, it is easier to make another say things for us than to say them in our own name and selves. There is greater quaint- ness and fascination in setting up bucolic and slow-witted figures to express our wise thoughts for us than in endowing equals for the task. So we now find set up for us whimsical figures to say the inwardness of things more pointedly and takingly than would be possible in sober terms. The Biglow Papers, Nasby Letters, Dooley Dissertations, or Fables spun out by some philosophic clown, are the vogue of the age. Figures advertise the inner before the outer meaning, and are therefore the most intense and effectual means of “gripping” the attention of our reader. The conciseness of this stenog- raphy of types is potently revealed to us now and then, when some genius, like Holmes, sums up a whole chapter of vision in a single sentence: “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the worid, and takes him by the beard, he is often surprised to find it come off in his hand, and that it NARRATION BY EXPOSITION 271 was only tied on to scare away timid adventurers.”’ This once read, or heard, who could endure the weakness and prolixity inevitable in any attempt to say it literally? EXERCISES 1. Try whether you can recall an instance of extended meta- phor, or perhaps shortened allegory, from some letter lately writ- ten, or conversation engaged in with others. 2. Under an assumed character, such as Mr. Dooley or Hosea Biglow, discuss some aspect of school or other politics. 3. Write a plain exposition of the wrongs or mischief that you have just treated in the whimsical vein. 4. Narrate some phase of school history or studentship, after the manner of the passage quoted from Coleridge, by exposition. 5. Report two or three examples, heard at home or at school, of facts expressed, like the sentences quoted (p. 260) from oral discourse, by the inner significance of each. 6. Recall from your reading, or report: from present search, three or four examples of literary figures of the class illustrated on p. 261. 7. Report some instance in which you or a companion have lately employed exposition for narration. 8. Examine some “fable” in the papers, and show its place and nature in the mock-serious writing of the day. 9g. Show whether the “I” of How They Brought the Good News does or does not represent Robert Browning personally. Discuss the poem, expounding the meaning and identifying the form. Show whether its purpose could have been accomplished by literal or direct treatment more potently. Note also whether it narrates by exposition, or expounds by narration. 10. Read “The Celestial Railroad,” in Hawthorne’s Mosses, and discuss its purpose and manner, and report whether you think it would be read and welcomed by the public of to-day, with rea- sons. 11. Study Wolsey’s famous soliloquy, in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, and discuss it as an illustration of the principles in this chapter. 12, Compare with some chapter of Carlyle’s History, Lecture II in his Heroes and Hero Worship. 13. Try a burlesque allegory. 14. Attempt developing a serious one after the manner of Bun- 272 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY yan, detailing the career of some imaginary or promising acquaint- ance, 15. Search out some theme, from former studies not connected with the exercises in this manual, and evaluate or criticize the fig- ures. 16. Narrate the fact of the vast emigrations to this country by use of the Thought or the Beauty form, in extended metaphor. CHAPTER XXVII ASSOCIATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT U is possible to make a literary subject taking by gathering about it pleasurable or unfavorable associations. The story-teller often colors, and approvably, the impressions his hearers are to receive of any object, or place, or personality. According to his sympathies towards his subject, he will choose or shape the associations in the midst of which it is to appear. If he wishes, he will set up a pleasing background. If it serves his general purpose, he will group around the central point dark or discordant elements. If it is necessary to make some town that he has visited appear romantic, he will tell of the Indian attack repulsed once by its settlers. If he is out of sympathy with the pretentious magnate connected with his theme, he will show him as he looked chasing his hat, or soaked in the rain, or recovering himself after a fall on the icy sidewalk. By use of like means, writers of fiction “queer” at the out- set a fashionable street by making it the scene of an automobile accident or an affray. Or they make an unattractive quarter seem transfigured by a wedding train and marriage bells. They cause the prison to appear bright with flowers, and sunshine, and noble visitors. They make the palace gloomy,—like “Bleak House,” by a storm and freshet and dank, sunless days. They turn the home uncanny, by letting us know that it has been disturbed by ghosts, or was once the haunt of thugs. Or, for a contrary effect, they discover to us that the sleepy village was the birthplace of some poet or artist of reputation. In its unpainted tavern Washington slept on his way to Boston in 1775. Or, in the motherland, it is a country hall in which the great Elizabeth lodged, or where Washington Irving, as at the Red Horse Inn, was a guest and wrote. Or yet again, it is the house in London where Benedict Arnold, suspected and spied upon, lived his last hours and died in remorse. 273 274 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY The strength of the prepossessions and prejudices to which the makers of literature appeal is seldom realized and often unsuspected. The most beautiful of roses loses its fragrance and becomes a thing of disgust if we learn that it has been picked up warm from the sidewalk, dropped there unwittingly by a bedizened wearer. Even money, as the measure of value and innocent medium of exchange, receives a taint from the iniquity of the last possessor, and the price of blood is adjudged, even by avarice, as fit only to buy a potter’s field. On the other hand, objects in themselves of limited or little worth, acquire immeasurable values from their associations. The pen with which Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation grows more priceless year by year. The Guarnerius “King Josephs,” the favorite instrument of Paganini, is a treasure too inviolate and exalted to be taken from its shrine—except in an hour of national calamity, as the earthquake at Messina—or even touched. Perhaps no author in our literature has used the mode of association more constantly or effectually than Poe. We find it employed variously in The Raven and others of his poems. Associations of taste and odor abound in King Pest, of sound and color in The House of Red Death, where the effect perhaps is strongest. From the Island of the Fay, in which the asso- ciations are mainly of form, or sight, we quote this illustra- tion :— The trees were dark in color, and mournful in form and attitude, wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spec- tral shapes that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and un- timely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect of graves, but were not; although over and all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The shade of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury it- self therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the sun de- scended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream; while other shadows issued momently from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors thus entombed. ASSOCIATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT 275 Writers of fact as well as creators of fiction often show the instinct of this mode. The effect is in essence cumulative, and produced as by a panorama of suggestive elements. Macau- lay’s description of the scene before the trial of Warren Hast- ings is a notable illustration. The following is a paragraph from Mrs. Edwards’s A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (Chapter VEIL: It may be that the traveler who finds himself for the first time in the midst of a grove of Wellingtonia gigantea feels something of the same overwhelming sense of awe and wonder! but the great trees, though they have taken three thousand years to grow, lack the pathos and the mystery that comes of human labor. They do not strike their roots through six thousand years of history. They have not been watered with the blood and tears of mil- lions. (It has been calculated that every stone of these huge Pharaonic temples cost at least one human life.) Their leaves know no sounds less musical than the singing of birds, or the moaning of the night-wind as it sweeps over the highlands of Calaveros. But every breath that wanders down the painted aisles of Karnak seems to echo back the sighs of those who perished in the quarry, at the oar, and under the chariot wheels of the conqueror. It is clear that instances of the present sort are not widely dissociated from those imparting mood. Shakespeare’s setting for the Fifth Act of The Merchant of Venice is in conception a nocturne, and involves a mood of nature as well as sumptuous associations. When mood and associations are commingled, as in this case, the effect is analogous to what is called atmosphere in painting. The best examples are doubtless to be found in poetry. There is probably nothing more remarkable, for effects of this union, in our literature than this scene from The Pass- ing of Arthur: Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west. A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea; Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew Down in his blood, till all his heart was cold. For friend and foe were shadows in the mist, And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew. 276 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE. VISUALLY The half-mystic half-golden atmosphere of The Holy Grail is constituted through mingling types of mystery with medie- val or romantic and religious associations. With this, Morris’s Story of the Glittering Plain, as a study of a somewhat dif- ferent sort, may be compared. The fate of a character, in a drama or novel, is often fixed in advance by the associations with which he is made to enter. Often a personage of importance, or one likely to command sympathy to the disadvantage of the principal figures, is dis- posed of permanently by the device perhaps of a single situa- tion. Shakespeare, in Othello, belittles Brabantio, in relation to the hero and his bride, by the expedient of making him come to the window of his palace, at the call of Iago and Roderigo, and receive rebuke for appearing before them without clothing. He is no doubt everyway a worshipful seignior, and devoted to the intellectual life. But we are not permitted to view the man in his essential nature, and he dies of grief without the least sympathy from ourselves. Minor examples of this mode are common enough in novels: Mrs. Gapp, who has buried three husbands and really ought to know a good deal about connubiosity—conju- gosity. This friend, a sound critic you could always rely upon, but—mind you !—a much better Critic than an Artist, was seated before the picture with a short briar-root in his mouth, and his thumbs in the armholes of a waistcoat with two buttons off. ‘ “I think you said you had met my cousin, Volumnia ax. “At Lady Presteign’s—yes, of course I did! with a splendid head of auburn hair, and a—strongly character- istic manner. We had a most enjoyable talk.” “She has a red head and freckles, and is interested in Psychceopaty.” No writer has been more daring or unsparing, in treatment of character by associations, than Dickens. Opening any- where, we shall find that our sympathies, from his earliest crea- tions in Pickwick to Mr. Jasper in Mystery of Edwin Drood, are sternly prescribed from the very start. Sometimes the fate ASSOCIATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT 277 of a character is fixed by the name with which the author labels him. In general, the effects of association are easily distinguished from characterizations proper. The things a man does deliberately or consciously evince his character. The clothes he selects reflect his tastes and nature. But a waist- coat, buttonless because of a wife’s neglect, contributes to the influence of association. By associations, we make a reader share our moods. Even the sun can be made to part, if the author wills, with somewhat of his glory: The sun had taken a mean advantage of its being a glo- rious day, to get the nice clean frozen corners and make a nasty mess. Mrs. Aiken, at one of the bays that flanked the doorway of Athabaska Villa, looked out upon the top and bottom half of a sun up to his middle in a chill purple mist, and waited for tea. It is but a step farther to burlesque, which may be effected similarly through associations. Butler’s satire upon classical allusions to the rosy-fingered dawn will occur to us here: The sun had long since in the lap Of Thetis taken out his nap, And, like a lobster boiled, the morn From black to red began to turn. The presentation or treatment of home interiors is an im- portant part of literary description, and is largely accomplished through associations. This example from Hardy shows how they may be used to supply the absence of details: A glance into the apartment at eight o’clock on this eventiul evening would have resulted in the opinion that it was as cozy and comfortable as could be wished for in boisterous weather. The calling of its inhabitant was pro- claimed by a number of highly-polished sheep-crooks without stems that were hung ornamentally over the fire- place, the curl of each shining crook varying from the antiquated type engraved in the patriarchal pictures of the old family Bibles to the most approved fashion of the last local sheepfair. The room was lighted by half-a-dozen 278 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY candles, having wicks only a trifle smaller than the grease which enveloped them, in candlesticks that were never used but at high-days, holy-days, and family feasts. The lights were scattered about the room, two of them standing on the chimney-piece. This position of candles was in itself significant. Candles on chimney-pieces always meant a party. On the hearth, in front of a back-brand to give sub- stance, blazed a fire of thorns, that crackled “like the laughter of the fool.” But in the following description, details and associations are used together: He advanced to the parlor, as the front room was called, though its stone floor was scarcely disguised by the car- pet, which only overlaid the trodden areas, leaving sandy deserts under the furniture. But the room looked snug and cheerful. The firelight shone out brightly, trembling on the bulging mouldings of the table-legs, playing with brass knobs and handles, and lurking in great strength on the under surface of the chimney-piece. A deep arm- chair, covered with horsehair, and studded with a count- less throng of brass nails, was pulled up on one side of the fireplace. The tea-things were on the table, the tea- pot cover was open, and a little hand-bell had been laid at that precise point towards which a person seated in the great chair might be expected instinctively to stretch his hand. The general sentiment of a story may be imparted before- hand by the influences of the setting. A parlor, with a Rogers group, and high-hung mottoes, lowers our sympathies to the pitch of a past generation. Tavern walls, with framed pic- tures, in color, of record trotters, or of pugilists stripped to the waist, with arms lifted, set our aversions against those who are content to have their being under such conditions. When the mind is engaged with accessories of this sort, so as to overshadow for the time being the real subject of treat- ment, the details and associations may be said to have become environment. The use of environment by such masters as Tolst6y and Turgenev and Ibsen has established its impor- tance in the interpretation of life by literature. Here is an example from Dostoévski (Brothers Karamazov, p. 206): ASSOCIATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT 279 Then Alyosha opened the door and crossed the thresh- old. He found himself in a regular peasant’s room. Though it was large, it was cumbered up with domestic belongings of all sorts, and there were several people in it. On the left was a large Russian stove. From the stove to the window on the left was a string across the room, and on it there were rags hanging. There was a bedstead against the wall on each side, right and left, covered with knitted quilts. On the one on the left was a pyramid of four print-covered pillows, each smaller than the one beneath. On the other there was only one very small pillow. The opposite corner was screened off by a curtain or a sheet hung on a string. Behind this cur- tain could be seen a bed made up on a bench and a chair. The rough square table of plain wood had been moved into the middle window. The three windows, which con- sisted each of four tiny greenish mildewy panes, gave lit- tle light, and were close shut, so that the room was not very light and rather stuffy. On the table was a frying- pan with the remains of some fried eggs, a half eaten piece of bread, and a small bottle with a few drops of vodka. A character may be postulated, and almost supplied before- hand, by skilful use of environment. This is an excellent il- lustration from Chaplin’s “Saint Patrick,” in Five Hundred Dollars: Across the street, and a little way down the road, is the square white house with a hopper-roof, which an elderly, childless widow, departing this life some forty years ago, thoughtfully left behind her for a parsonage. It is a pleasant, homelike house, open to sun and air, and the pleasantest of all its rooms is the minister’s study. It is an upper front chamber, with windows to the east and south. There is nothing in the room of any value; but whether the minister is within, or is away and is repre- sented only by his palm-leaf dressing-gown, somehow the Spirit of peace seems always to abide there... . Over the chimney-piece hangs a great missionary map, showing the stations of the different societies, with a key at one side. This blue square in Persia denotes a mission- ary post of the American Board of Commissioners; that red cross in India is an outpost of a Presbyterian mission- ary society; this green diamond in Arrapatam marks a station of the Free Church Missionary Union. As one 280 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY looks the map over, he seems to behold the whole mission- ary force at work. He sees, in imagination, Mr. Elmer Small, from Augusta, Maine, preaching predestination to a company of Karens, in a house of reeds, and the Rev. Geo. T. Wood, from Massachusetts, teaching Paley in Roberts College at Constantinople. ... The walls of the room are for the most part hidden by books. The shelves are simple affairs of stained maple, covered heavily with successive coats of varnish, cracked, as is that of the desk, by age and heat. The contents are varied. Of religious works there are the Septuagint, in two fat little blue volumes, like Roman candles; Conant’s Genesis; Hodge on Romans; Hacket on Acts, which the minister’s small children used to spell out as “Jacket on Acts”; Knott on the Fallacies of the Antinomians; A Tour in Syria; Dr. Grant and the Mountain Nestorians, and six Hebrew Lexicons, singed by fire—a paternal inheritance. There are a good many works, too, of general literature, but rather oddly selected, as will happen where one makes up his library chiefly by writing book-notices: Peter Bayne’s Essays; Coleridge; the first volume of Masson’s Life of Milton; Vanity Fair; the Dutch Republic; the Plurality of Worlds; and Mommsen’s Rome. That very attractive book in red you need not take down; it is only the History of Norwalk, Conn., with the residence of J. T. Wales, Esq., for a frontispiece: the cover is all there is to it. Finally, there are two shelves of Patent Office Re- ports, and Perry’s Expedition to Japan with a panoramic view of Yeddo. This shows that the minister has num- bered a congressman among his flock. After this presentation of environment, the minister, Dr. Parsons, is introduced by name, but without a syllable of de- scriptive or other treatment as a character. There is no need. We have put into the frame already a better picture than the author could have limned out for us. It is possible to tell a whole story thus by environment, with- out introducing the characters living in the midst of it at all. This indeed has more than once been done. Environment shows the things which personality has grouped, or allowed to be grouped, about itself. Associations cling to things and places after personality has been withdrawn. The eye of the skilled writer is quick to note the possibilities offered, in dealing with a given character, by both these helps. ASSOCIATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT 281 EXERCISES I. Make a description of the most notable assembly that you have witnessed, using as aid the associations available from the place or the eminence of personages observed to have been present. 2. Recall some instance of offhand oral story-telling, in which associations were utilized as part of the means employed to make the recital taking. 3. Describe some room, or the interior of some house, by use of associations. 4. Make an environment sketch of some home, or room in it, which shall suggest the appearance and character of the occupant. 5. show the surroundings and atmosphere of a pretentious house in which you would not like to take lodgings. 6. Show the like, in a house which, in the contrary way, at- tracts. 7. Write a letter from your home town, as to a stranger whom you wish to dissuade from coming to settle in it. Be careful to present only actual considerations, without exaggeration, found in unfavorable circumstances or signs. 8. Write another letter, as to another stranger for whom you wish your home town to have attractions, without exaggeration of its claims. g. Write an appreciation of the use De Amicis makes of asso- ciations in the lately studied chapter of Constantinople. 10. Point out the main use of associations in Scott’s Ivanhoe. 11. Write an appreciation of Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and show for what qualities the work, in your judgment, is most re- markable. 12. Read Chaplin’s “Saint Patrick,’ in Five Hundred Dollars, and expound the meaning of the story. 13. Develop your impressions of Dr. Parsons, as given through the author’s handling of the sketch. Show how you would pre- sent this personality through using the ordinary means of charac- terization. 14. Report and discuss any example of environment work simi- lar, in short stories, or other fiction, recalled from recent reading. 15. Show the use of environment and associations in Howells’s novel of The Lion’s Head. 16. Use the method of associations in describing some heirloom belonging to your family. CHAPTER XXVIII THE CONCRETE MANNER E have doubtless noted, in the essay and review articles that we have examined since our study of Exposition, that the language used is often not so easy to follow as we expect. We have perhaps gone back to Chapter XIV in the hope of finding out why the expository matter that we meet with is generally not so taking and effective as the examples instanced there. It grows more and more apparent that the true inwardness of things, when opened skilfully, is not less engaging than the things themselves. It is now in order to inquire what sort of skill is thus used by the best writers, and how to adapt it to our own problems with best effect. That we are in the midst of a movement that is changing the ways and standards of literary writing is undoubted. That we are ourselves to help in our degree enact a chapter of more pronounced reform is inspiring. It will make us surer of our steps if we first survey the background before which our pres- ent and prospective work is laid. Most of us have probably by a few years escaped the tribu- lations which our fathers suffered. In their first studies in essay writing, they were encouraged to magnify their tasks, and write as profoundly as they were able. They sometimes surprised themselves at the amount of meaning they could crowd into a single sentence. They set down “human good- ness,” “righteous endeavor,” when they meant “good men and women,” “efforts of righteous folk.” Though they could hardly be induced to read a paragraph of ideas cast in abstract form, they wrote with an abstractness even more abstract. Shall we “sample” the class of styles which they accepted as their models? The following is quoted from an expositional best seller of a century ago: 282 THE CONCRETE MANNER 283 As long as man remained ignorant of his own nature, he could not, of design, form his institutions in accord- ance with it. Until his own faculties became the subjects of his observation, and their relations the objects of his reflection, they operated as mere instincts. He adopted savage habits, because his animal propensities were not at first directed by the moral sentiments, or enlightened by reflection. He next assumed the condition of the bar- barian, because his higher powers had made some advance, but had not yet attained supremacy; and he now manu- factures, because his constructive faculties and intellect have given him power over physical nature, while his avarice and ambition are predominant, and are gratified by such avocations. Not one of these changes, however, has been adopted from design, or from perception of its suitableness to the nature of man. He has been ill at ease in them all; but it does not follow that he shall continue for ever equally ignorant of his nature, and equally in- capable of framing institutions to harmonize with it.— George Combe: The Constitution of Man, pp. II, 12. There seems small reason, except consciousness of ability, why a seasoned author should write in such a vein for com- mon readers. There are several reasons why, for the sake of his public, he should eschew it wholly. One of importance is, it sets up and keeps wrong standards before the learner. The following school essay, composed under the usual conditions, will illustrate: To those of us who have encountered circumstances, such as without any apparent effort contribute to nature her uncompromising demands for our physical develop- ment and mental growth, the imagination is one of the sweet endowments of nature. It being made the sweeter by reason of the inability of its owner to comprehend its presence. For is it not by means of the imagination this mortal clay rises beyond its so-called station, and is launched into the very realms of the ideal of the soul? We thereby reaping the harvest in part of our own most distant ideals. Could the imagination nurtured in such a physical exist- ence as heretofore described do else than picture, for such, as a whole a happy route. Possibly habitated by scattered thorns that prick not deep, but rather a life which grasps 284 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY the spoils on its route sailing on and on in the far and mysterious future is seen to be merging into its eternity. The imagination very reluctantly heeds the crumbling of the form which it inhabits. It lastly concedes that this form is not as of yore. That the young lady who composed this exactly copied “theme” was an immature student, is evident enough. That she could have written it, had there never been literature like the former example to mislead her, is scarcely to be imagined. She is known not to have been wanting, except as to literary matters, in intelligence and judgment. She undoubtedly had meanings of some sort to express. Her command of spelling and punctuation should argue corresponding ability to say these meanings with some degree of clearness. But would she have been willing to let her instructors know just what those ideas were? Is there any other explanation of her performance than the ambition, through use of abstract, high-sounding phrases, to seem profound? It was shown in Chapter XXVI that high seriousness may be overindulged. It can be carried, as the observation there might have specified, to the point of affectation. Both of our quotations would seem to bear this added statement out. Now affectation is in essence an attempt to keep everybody—and if possible one’s seli—from knowledge of one’s limitations. In literary performances like the ones before us, the affectation represents effort to make the world believe that one’s “‘style,” though possibly agonized over, is one’s easy and everyday manner of expression. But affectation, in cases like the pres- ent, instead of forestalling rather surely challenges the suspi- cion that the writer is suffering from an inferiority complex, and is trying to defeat it. There is only one thing worse, namely, a superiority complex, or, in one plain word, conceit. The accomplishment most covetable here is the courage to accept one’s self at face value, write what one’s hand finds to write, and “take no thought.” Students born to the use of other languages seem to go through no such sophomoric stage. Study of French exposition, if one can read that language at all readily, will encourage. It is not altogether our good fortune that we have inherited THE CONCRETE MANNER 285 two dialects of English, one for speaking and one for writing. When we speak, we prevailingly use simple, direct, and pointed sentences, made up from our homely, mother-tongue vocabu- lary. We have small chance to sort out our words, or judge beforehand how our phrase is going to impress our hearer. As was pointed out in Chapter XIV, we turn by instinct from fact to thought in the commonest: conversation. But we are not likely to venture more than one “thought” statement at one time. The consciousness of being with others and our sense of humor guard us from seeming, or consenting to seem, pro- found. But when we are by ourselves, and set about the task of writing, not letters, but thought substance, we are brought by association to think of written diction, and we fall back upon our bookish dialect. Having no other companionship, we are almost sure to become self-conscious, and if we write one ab- stract sentence, to follow it with another, and that with still another. If we remember hearing of such a rule, we try, after writing two abstract sentences, to have a concrete one succeed them. But even this does not produce diction easily read by everybody. Persons accustomed to public communi- cation by the ear rather than the eye, find themselves at fault when they take up an article written in such a vein. When such readers come upon discourse piled high with abstract sen- tences, they are helpless. This is the sort of writing that they call “dry,” and often fail to comprehend at all. It was shown, in Chapter X XVI, that it is not difficult to dignify and strengthen our meanings by setting them in their highest relations to the world of thought. We now note that it is equally easy, by an abuse of our reflective powers, to weaken the effect of what we wish to say. Combe in our ex- ample does this by casting every one of his ideas, not in them- selves obscure, in abstract form. At the time (1828) when his work was issued, the manner he imitated was going out, and concrete writing was coming in. But this country, which had produced in the Federalist papers high examples of 18th century elaboration, was slow to catch the spirit of the coming freedom. Among many examples of the lingering severity, we might turn to Vol. I, published in 1834, of Bancroft’s His- 286 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY tory of the United States. The author has told us that he toiled long over the first pages of this book, striving after simple and natural language. The diction is observed to grow less and less labored as the work proceeds, and attains in the tenth volume, appearing in 1874, a practicable suggestiveness and fluency. “In this style,” concludes a prominent reviewer of the final volume, “the author should now begin over again and rewrite the whole.” The following is his first paragraph (I. iv) on “The Colonization of Virginia”: The period of success in planting colonies in Virginia had arrived; yet not till changes had occurred, affecting the character of European politics and society, and mould- ing the forms of colonization. The reformation had inter- rupted the harmony of religious opinion in the west of Europe; and differences in the church began to constitute the basis of political parties. Commercial intercourse equally sustained a revolution. It had been conducted on the narrow seas and by land; it now launched out upon the broadest waters; and, after the East Indies had been reached by doubling the southern promontory of Africa, the great commerce of the world was performed upon the ocean. The art of printing had become known; and the press diffused intelligence and multiplied the facilities of instruction. The feudal institutions which had been reared in the middle ages, were already undermined by the current of time and events, and, swaying from their base, threatened to fall. Productive industry had, on the one side, built up the fortunes and extended the influence of the active classes; while habits of indolence and of expense had impaired the estates and diminished the power of the nobility. These changes also produced cor- responding results in the institutions which were to rise in America. There is small warrant in the early history of the English essay for a prose like this. Montaigne, its reputed progenitor, abounds in long illustrations and anecdotes: I have often heard it reported that cowardize is the mother of cruelty: and have perceived by experience that this malicious sharpness and inhumane severitie of corage is commonly accompanied with feminine remissenesse. I have seene some of the cruelest subject to weepe easily, THE CONCRETE MANNER 287 and for frivolous causes. Alexander the tyrant of Pheres could not endure to see tragedies acted in the theatres for feare his subjects should see him sob and weepe at the misfortunes of Hecuba and Andromache; he who without remorse or pitty caused daily so many poore people to be most cruelly massacred and barbarously murthered. May it be weaknesse of spirit makes them so pliable to all extremities? We find beginnings of concrete expression in the writings of Bacon, who follows Montaigne afar off, and who neverthe- less composes whole essays in abstract terms. Here is a typ- ical example of his manner, from the opening of his observa- tions on Dispatch: Affected dispatch is one of the most dangerous things to business that can be. It is like that which the physi- cians call pre-digestion, or hasty digestion; which is sure to fill the body full of crudities and secret seeds of dis- eases. Therefore measure not dispatch by the times of sitting, but by the advancement of the business. And as in races it is not the large stride or high lift that makes the speed; so in business, the keeping close to the matter, and not taking of it too much at once, procureth dispatch. It is the care of some only to come off speedily for the time; or to contrive some false periods of business, because they may seem men of dispatch. But it is one thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting off. And business so handled at several sittings or meetings goeth commonly backward and forward in an unsteady manner. I knew a wise man that had it for a byword, when he saw men hasten to a conclusion, “Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner.” On the other side, true dispatch is a rich thing. For time is the measure of business, as money is of wares; and business is brought at a dear hand, where there is small dispatch. The Spartans and Spaniards have been noted to be of small dispatch; Mi venga la muerte de Spagna;—Let my death come from Spain; for then it will be sure to be long in comming. We see there is evident tendency, in this first stage of essay- making, to couple the statement of a principle with an illus- tration. This was really to be expected, since it is the natu- ral manner of every one in oral exposition or argument with 288 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY his fellow. It must, however, be noted that Bacon, in the last three paragraphs of the present essay, allows himself but a single concrete clause. In his list of subjects, fifty-one out of fifty-eight titles are abstract. Another phase in the growth of concrete diction is illus- trated when we find a paragraph or group of abstract state- ments followed by a corresponding series of concrete, illus- trative sentences. Good examples of this manner, one from Shaftesbury’s Characteristics, and one from the essays of Bol- ingbroke,—writings produced a century later than Bacon’s work, are given for comparison, at the end of this volume. The fame of these unexcelled fabricators of prose has been obscured by the popularity of Steele and Addison, in spite of the well- known fact that the Spectator papers were addressed to the common public, and not to readers interested, like Boling- broke’s and Shaftesbury’s, in the cultivation of literature as one of the fine arts. We note here, in the first (p. 311) of these examples—re- produced from the edition of 1714—that Lord Shaftesbury is discussing the various names under which the essays of his day were issued. The first paragraph, barring the reference to Seneca, is abstract. Then follows an equally long exemplifica- tion of its meanings. In Lord Bolingbroke’s essay (pp. 314- 317) On Luxury, a dozen lines of abstract text repeatedly alternate with as many of illustration, till all is ended with the example of Sybaris,—which indeed might well have been made into a paragraph by itself. By the close of another century, the public of British read- ers had expanded greatly through the influx of thousands who knew not and cared not for the traditions of the learned class. Agreeably to the change in taste, Macaulay contributed in 1825 an article on Milton to the Edinburgh Review, and by it rose to leadership among the essayists of the time. His work seemed to rival in fascination the novels of Scott, then in the heyday of his strength. He popularized his manner still fur- ther in the History, which was designed to carry its meaning to the commonest intelligence, and forestall the re-reading of any sentence. An examination of the language in Muiulton shows that approximately two-thirds of its matter is concrete. THE CONCRETE MANNER 289 In 1821, four years before this paper was published, De Quin- cey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater had opened for its au- thor a great career in the same field. His style, less concrete than Macaulay’s, was more brilliant and spontaneous, and more pleasing to the educated class. In this country, as late as 1870, college teachers of rhetoric were holding up De Quincey as the necessary model for all those aspiring to become masters of a literary style. Under the influence of these authors, the literary essay reached its highest currency and prestige. It was now to part with much of its remaining formality, and take on yet more of the pithiness and sprightliness of the great conversers. Hith- erto people had written essays often for the sake of making essays, of bolstering out a fashionable type of literary prod- uct. They now began to work with less and less professional- ism, with less and less attention to style as such, and with more and more reference to results. This specimen of a new man- ner, dating from the last years of both De Quincey and Ma- caulay, demonstrates how radical were the forces at work re- making English exposition in spirit as well as form: Self-made men? Well, yes. Of course everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all. Are any of you people old enough to remember that Irishman’s house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney-top with his own hands? It took him a good many years to build it, and one could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it was a very good house for a “self-made” carpen- ter’s house, and people praised it, and said how remark- ably the Irishman succeeded. They never thought of praising the fine blocks of houses a little further on. We can easily imagine how this theme of the self-made man would have been handled in De Quincey’s effortless and Ma- caulay’s motivated manner. From De Quincey we should have had pages on pages of brilliant, and perhaps not altogether relevant, discussion. We can also fancy how one writing by 290 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Bolingbroke’s or Shaftesbury’s method might dispatch it in two paragraphs. In the first or abstract part of the treatment, we should have a definition of the self-made, as one denied the advantages of education, leisure for travel, knowledge of the world, and wide experience in affairs. There would be also some reference to consequent defects, as ignorance of the past, incertitude, general provincialism of thought and action. Then, in the concrete portion, would follow consideration of in- stances, as Andrew Johnson, his inexperience, his mistakes, his failure. In contrast with this, the writer in the present instance has managed, by a touch or two, to make the second of two such paragraphs do the work of both. He takes as his example of the self-made, not a publicist from history, but an Irishman from the street, and puts him to a test that everybody can com- prehend. The outcome is not a marred career, but an erratic building that serves as an object lesson to the whole com- munity. The unstandardized work of a self-made carpenter is more palpable and visual than the unstandardized services of a statesman, a clergyman, or a doctor, and is made here to suggest potentially all other kinds. While the formal essayist would have been specifying what he intended to write about, or surveying the field, and perhaps making us doubt whether we cared at all to read him, this man tells us, in the first four lines, his theme, and carries us into the heart of his argument besides. Best of all, he does not think it necessary to inform his reader, at the close, of what he has been doing. While our example is conversational rather than conven- tional, it illustrates in a somewhat exaggerated degree the terseness and verve of modern exposition. The secret of its takingness and strength lies in the amount of thinking that the author is willing to let the reader do for himself. The vast increase in the volume of expository writing, and the growing intensity of mental life, enforce this economy of space and ef- fort. The discussions of the day are sometimes literary, some- times business-like, and sometimes literary and business-like together. Essays will still of course be written, and delectably, after the classic manner of Lamb and Addison. But the slow, meditational mode of treatment, and the manifest aim to ex- THE CONCRETE MANNER 291 ploit the essay type at any cost, limits its audience to an elected few. The essay with a purpose, which may be said to have come in with Hazlitt, and to have overshadowed the earlier type, has taken on a variety of forms. In each of these it is clear and forceful, but is still wanting in the attractiveness, the deliberate touch essential to all great art. Literary art is not less possible in exposition than in poetry and fiction. The concrete manner has other aims and aspects and methods than the displacement of abstract diction by con- crete sentences, and the use of analogy as seen in the illustration from Holmes (Autocrat of the Breakfast Table) just quoted. It was indeed by these very papers that the possibilities of the mode were first demonstrated fully. In the work so named, Holmes musters an astonishing variety of essay substance, and while administering it incidentally, much in the manner of a Madame de Staél or Madame de Circourt in her Paris salon, yet lays claim to the functions and prerogatives of an essay- maker. By it he lifted thousands of unlettered minds to the level of literary ideas throughout the English-speaking world. His “‘breakfast-tables” were nothing other than an open device, like De Amicis’s delayed entry into Constantinople, to arouse and engage popular attention. A more specific and unified example of the concrete manner, employed in all seriousness and with conscious literary art, to elucidate an obscure and difficult subject, is Victor Ryd- berg’s essay on “The Magic of the Learned.” ‘This forms the third division of his Magic of the Middle Ages (Medeltidens Magi), published in 1864. In this part of the work, Profes- sor Rydberg, Swedish novelist and poet, presents the results of his research into the intricacies of magic. A generation ear- lier, he would undoubtedly have brought his materials together in the shape of a monograph, which only scholars would have read. Since scholars had less need of assistance than anybody else, he addressed his essay to the common public in a form that has proved fascinating to every sort of reader, scholars not excepted. As an especially illuminating example, and ideally practicable for study, we have included it with omission of a few unimportant passages, among the illustrations at the end of the present volume. 292 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Professor Rydberg begins by giving his readers (p. 331) a clear notion concerning the state of learning at the universi- ties in the Middle Age. He does this, not by making general statements, but by bringing each of us with him to the doors of lecture halls, and letting us judge for ourselves how abstract and profitless was the knowledge administered within. It is then easy to make us see and feel (p. 334) why men of the highest aspirations gave over learning for magic. Science is strongly alluring students to-day, with its definite laboratory problems, from greatly enriched and simplified classical stud- ies. We are helped here to realize how much greater must have been its charm, in the primitive forms of alchemy and magic, in the days of Faust. After introducing us to the person and the surroundings of the magician (p. 335) in his tower, Rydberg makes him ex- pound to us the main principles of his system (pp. 338-346) in its own terms. He is next caused to explain (pp. 348-353) the preliminaries of a proposed conjuration. By the consummate device of having it performed for us, and with our aid, while each stands clothed in the robes of an acolyte within the pro- tected circle, the author succeeds to a surprising degree in bringing back to reality the atmosphere of the age, and the fearful fascination of its beliefs. This, we recognize, is ad- ministered to us in (p. 3560) the causal way. But the Concrete Manner may be applied not only to the re- habilitation of a lost art and an exploded philosophy, but more satisfyingly to the elucidation of important living issues. Its values are greatest in matters which, because of complexity and contradictory features, baffle the lay mind. Up-to-date il- lustrations lie ready to our hand. In recent magazine articles, Professor Stuart P. Sherman has surprisingly clarified public thinking on the ethic quality of present-day novels, and on the sanctionable eligibility of suitors to one’s daughters. But the crowning number (Atlantic Monthly for May, 1924), of the series, which ventilates the claims and place of “Bacchus” in modern life, is probably the most typical and finished: example —hbarring the hurry of closing paragraphs—of the manner in question to be found in literature. This paper, with Rydberg’s THE CONCRETE MANNER 293 contribution, may be considered also as illustrations of Exposi- tion by Narration. Thus is the concrete method seen to be no new system of presentation, but an old one rediscovered and reapplied. We call it the modern objective or “laboratory” method. But it is as old as the visit of the prophet Nathan to King David, old as the Dialogues of Plato, or the Cyropedia of Xenophon, old as the parables of the Christ. It is the method by which the father teaches his trade to his son, or the mother, housewifery to her daughter. It is the method of the ballad-maker and the poet. It is the manner of the cartoon artist, so much dreaded by the political spoilsman and the boss. By it Scott’s Demonol- ogy might have rivalled Kenilworth or Quentin Durward in popularity. It is the method of Carlyle in Sartor Resartus, of Turgenev’s Sportsman’s Sketches, of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, of Browning’s How They Brought the Good News, of Black Beauty, of Silvio Pellico’s protest, in My Prisons, against the tyranny of Austria. It is the method by which Henry Ward Beecher preached most powerfully against chattel slavery, not by a sermon, but by selling a beautiful slave girl at auction on the platform of Plymouth church. The concrete manner is evidently an important subject of study. It reduces the bulk of written communication, since it expresses by implication or by example much of what for- mal writers feel bound to set forth summarizingly in generals or in details. It conserves and concentrates the energy of both author and reader. It gives exercise to the highest liter- ary art, not only in character-drawing and other matters of execution, but in organizing and ordering the materials to be used. It includes all forms of the drama among its modes. It would seem as worthy of consideration, from the academic mind, as the binomial theorem or cube root. EXERCISES 1. Select, from outside life or books, some idea or subject valu- able for people to know, but unlikely because of intricacy or diff- culty to appeal to readers. Devise means by which it may be made 294 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY to arrest and absorb the common mind. Carry out the plan, and report trial of its success. 2. Examine the style of some former exercise Pcknostian and show how in details it might be recast more attractively. Add in your report the number of abstract and of concrete clauses used in your first treatment of this theme. 3. Examine some expository paper in the Century, or other standard magazine, that has engaged your attention and proved readable throughout. Show what qualities of style or manner have enabled this success. 4. Make report upon some novel of the day that opens tak- ingly. Show how far the attractiveness, apart from the presen- tation of character, is due to the plan of handling. 5. Search out, or recall from recent reading, some example of treatment similar to Rydberg’s in the “Magic of the Learned,” and outline the manner of its strategy or art. 6. Plan the history of your family, or some other history, in such detail as to fill three chapters. 7. Develop, with imaginative appeals and other modes, the first of these chapters. 8. Make an interpretation of Browning’s How They Brought the Good News, showing its idea and purpose, and the use made by the author in it of the concrete manner. 9. Show whether Meredith’s Evan Harrington is a novel with a purpose. If it is found to be such, explain how its chief idea might have been presented in another way. 10. For a more recent example, study the art and meaning of Edna Ferber’s So Big, and write a succinct appreciation. 11. Choosing some division of Holmes’s Poet at the Breakfast Table, show the ideas he has in mind, and his manner of present- ing them severally. 12. Study the question of presenting effectively some principle that has impressed you, and outline the plan of treatment in a novel or in some other of the concrete modes. 13. Read and describe the plan of Howells’s Through the Eye of the Needle. Prepare the outline of an exposition, in the older form, by which the subject might have been treated. CHAPTER XXIX SOLECISMS AND INFELICITIES PRACTICE supported by usage, but one to be discour- aged in careful writing, is the employment of “he,” or “she,” or “it,” or “they,” or indeed any other pronoun, to represent more than a single antecedent in the same clause or sentence. The effect of signifying more than one idea, in a single statement, by the same pronoun, is to reduce clearness, and sometimes to cause confusion. In the following clauses, there is no real ambiguity, but the strength of the communication is impaired : A force of 12,000 Wellington veterans, relieved by the victory of Toulouse for American service, landed below New Orleans. Jackson had 6,000 men to meet them, but they were well protected by breastworks. Here all chance of doubt or delay in the reader’s understand- ing of the sense might have been forestalled by a different construction of the second sentence, or by substituting “his troops” or some equivalent expression for “they” in the last line. There is still greater disquiet or loss of energy, for the reader, when the matter presented is not fact but thought. The following is an average example of unstandardized, un- considered diction purporting to be literary: But they do not observe that history acts more consist- ently than they, and cures general errors only by making long generations draw from them the last consequences, and suffer their full effect. There is infelicity if not impropriety in putting “history,” and “they’—standing in the text for “defenders’”—together 295 296 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY as belonging in the same class of agents. If the personifica- tion is to stand, the sentence should be divided, and the parts recast. It is possible that unity of thought in the author’s mind prevented him from expressing his meaning in two dis- tinct periods. Even in that case he should have declined the task of putting the whole weight of his idea upon a single sentence. We can preserve the essential unity, while we di- vide, by some such arrangement as this: But they do not observe that the acts of history are more consistent than their own. It has also escaped their notice that history cures general errors in no other way than by making many generations draw from them the last consequences, and suffer their effect to the full. Attention to the principle in question would spare us many tandem construction of the relative and interrogative pronouns. Examples of this kind are common in oral English, and some- times find their way into what is offered as literary diction: ... That the generations to come might know them, even the children that should be born, who should arise and tell them to their children. The affection of this woman became matter of suspi- cion, not indeed to the Laird, who was never hasty in sus- pecting evil, but to his wife, who had indifferent health and poor spirits. She then showed him, by another schedule, the large claims of which payment was instantly demanded, to dis- charge which no funds could be found or assigned. While he debated how to address this unexpected appa- rition, it disappeared from the point which it first occu- ~ pied, and presently after became again visible, perched on the cliff out of which projected the tree in which Ar- thur had taken refuge. The difference is not great between these cases and such as the following, once frequently met with in good literature, but now, because of our shorter-sentence manner, happily be- coming unusual: SOLECISMS AND INFELICITIES 297 Jupiter, with his accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which to take hold of it. Literary people are not always so strict in respecting property of this description; and I know more than one celebrated man, who professes as a maxim, that he holds it no duty of honor to restore a borrowed book; not to speak of many less celebrated persons, who, without openly professing such a principle, do however, in fact, exhibit a lax morality in such cases. But the question is not whether the maiden herself prac- tices sorcery, which he who avers had better get ready his tomb, and provide for his soul’s safety; the doubt lies here, whether, as the descendant of a family whose rela- tions with the unseen world are reported to have been of the closest degree, selfish and fantastical beings may not have power to imitate her form, and to present her ap- pearance where she is not personally present,—in fine, whether they have permission to play at her expense tricks, which they cannot exercise over other mortals, whose forefathers have ever regulated their lives by the rules of the Church, and died in regular communion with it. A broad application of the same principle would reduce the frequency of certain other tandem constructions, wanting, to say the least, in elegance. Among these is the use of an infini- tive with its sign “to” as the complement of another infinitive preceded by the same sign. “I made him offer to escort the company,” offends less than “I forced him to offer to escort the company.” Similarly, the employment of a phrase intro- duced by “of” following another noun governed by the same preposition, carries with it an echoing suggestion that tends to confusion of thought: The pick of the officers of the regiment. As I put my foot over the threshold, I became aware of the figure of a youth of about my own height. I heard with dismay the unmistakable sound of the clos- ing of the compartment of the car in which I had caught sight of the object of my search. 298 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY On account of the modern tendency to restrict the use of the possessive case to instances of real possession, and to subjective genitive constructions, the preposition “of” is used more now than in earlier periods of English prose development. With a little attention, to avoid repeating it in the same part of the sentence, we can assist in preventing the threatened abuse of this word. The common impulse to suppress clauses, and otherwise con- dense our diction, has led to increased employment of “his,” “her,” “its,” and other possessives, as objective genitives. In the sentence,— This is an important subject, and J move its immediate consideration, “its” is in sense object of the verb-idea “‘consider” in the ac- tive noun “consideration” formed from it, and should be put in right relations with it more distinctly. The speaker was doubtless subconsciously averse to employing a second clause, —‘that it be considered immediately,” and used “its immedi- ate consideration” as a substitute. But “consideration of it immediately” is what, if unwilling to say “I move that it be immediately considered,” he should have used. There is no other approvable object-genitive construction. Similarly, we not seldom hear and see sentences like this,— I confidently expected her conviction. “Her conviction” is of course correct in grammatical form, but not in grammatical sense. Conviction is not a thing to be pos- sessed, but suffered. In other words, the possessive “her” has been forced back into its old objective-genitive sense, now in- consistent with its present adjective value. The speaker was evidently controlled by a standing purpose to be succinct, and save the use of an extra predication,— I confidently expected that she would be convicted. Even had there been no other means of expression, such as “expected to see her convicted,” or “expected a verdict of con- viction,” it would be better to suffer distention of the sense by ~SOLECISMS AND INFELICITIES 299 employing this second clause than sanction an objectionable locution. In poetry, and in phrases like “for conscience’ sake,” ‘‘a day’s sail,” “a week’s vacation,’ which have become naturalized to the ear, looser possessive relations are approved. But posses- sives of personified ideas, as “Science’s conclusions,” “India’s revenue,” “Turkey’s debt,” “Philadelphia’s mayor,” should be used, if at all, advisedly. On the other hand, the employment of the possessive case to denote the author of an action, as in “Cesar’s triumph,” “Richard’s entry,’ “Napoleon’s retreat,” and the like, in which possessive forms, doing the work of verb-subjects, are properly subjective genitives, seems not to be losing but gaining ground. One should beware of using nouns in psuedo-apposition with possessives as in +9 No further references to Newman’s life as a student are met with. Here “student” agrees in form with “life” and in sense with the nominative case of “Newman’s.” Many examples occur in which a noun is constructed in psuedo-apposition with “his” or some similar possessive adjective; as “not to mention his eminence as a surgeon.” Here a proper equivalent would be “his eminence in surgery.” In the former instance, some such form as “references to Newman’s student life,’ or “‘life in student years,” would have saved the palpable friction caused by the unexpected turn of phrase. Every writer should take care to eliminate all inadvertent echoed or punning expressions, like “Give me one too,” from his work. Anything likely to draw attention from the thought to peculiarities in the manner in which it is expressed should be sedulously avoided. Attempts to condense by implying parallel constructions should be managed in a way to fore- stall querulous as well as just reproof. In a book by a pro- fessional writer of the day, this sentence has been allowed to stand: The idea that there is a kind of inequality for a woman in minding her own business and letting man do the 300 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY same, comes from our confused and rather stupid notion of the meaning of inequality. The author was surely aware that there is a large difference, in a case of this kind, between saying “the same” and “the like,” but evidently lost sense of it here in the attempt to unify both sides of the thought. To the ill-natured reader, a slip like this spoils all the effect of the passage, if not of the vol- ume. The fault in the following—from a standard magazine —is even worse: Woman has her place in train or tram—and so has man. She has her place on street or sidewalk, and so has he. This reads like a burlesque of sound writing. There is fault in the spirit as well as in the form. There is a sort of precipi- tancy, in such styles, which belongs to the newspaper rather than to literature, and which often dilates as well as clips the sense in the same sentence; as here: She is a woman who has lived every minute of her life, and lives them still, and can make them, and does make them, alive for you and me and for all of us. Here, “lives them” is unprofitably condensed from “lives all of them,” or “‘each of them,” in the first half. In the second half of the period, the simple meaning, “‘can also make them alive for every reader,” is expanded and multiplied with small gain in power. There is a large difference between using the free, unpe- dantic sentence-forms of oral speech, and employing its col- loquialisms, its vocabulary, or its general abandon. Authors must to-day write in simple, unprofessional, businesslike dic- tion, and without waste of words. A generation ago, when the movement towards simplification of English styles was at its height, certain reformers used the contractions “isn’t,” “can’t,” “don’t,” ““won’t” in their most elaborated diction. But their following has not increased. There is a standard of dig- nity which the public expects its makers of literature to main- SOLECISMS AND INFELICITIES 301 tain. The writer who is not willing to meet this expectation will forfeit much of his influence and success. Sometimes, at the beginning of a fresh paragraph, the main subject of thought is carried forward by “he” or “it” or ‘‘they,” even when the antecedent is distant or doubtful. This is the opening sentence from a new division of the matter in an essay : He was always in trepidation when he faced an audi- ence, and unconfident of his power to move it. In the paragraphs preceding, Webster, Everett, and Wendell Phillips are compared, Phillips being mentioned last. But this we did not notice, and so stopped our reading to look back and verify. To save the moment of question as to which of the orators was now to be considered further, “Phillips”? should stand in place of “he.” Indeed, were no other person under consideration, there would have been superior dignity in pre- senting the name of the subject anew. By our present system of paragraphing—which is more formal than could be ap- proved by authority in certain other literatures, as for instance, French—each integral division is theoretically independent, and may in general mention again its topic noun. There are various faults of diction, as well as of construc- tion, which we should be on our guard to forestall. One of these is the vice of mannerisms. Many of us have devised or adopted turns of expression which are especially agreeable to our ear, and which we per- haps use incessantly in ordinary talk. Any such overuse of favorite phrases must be excluded from our writing. We should be diligent in suppressing every sign that would tend to prove us addicted to either erratic or stereotyped forms of expression. Anything that argues indifference to the claims of taste will distress the reader, and perhaps induce the vision of an unworthy personality. One of the latest phases of progress in written English is the employment of a “Factor of Safety.” This phrase, bor- rowed from the technical dialect of Engineering, signifies add- ing an element of strength, beyond conceivable emergencies, to 302 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY bridge girders or like mechanical devices. We may employ it with reference to rhetorical effectiveness, and as making the expression of one’s meaning a little clearer than the slower or less attentive intelligence is likely to require. This “factor” is no new expedient or element proposed by some literary philosopher. It has probably been mentioned in no elementary or other textbook of composition. But it is one of the earliest elements in our mastery of oral communication. Perhaps be- fore we reach the age of ten we have learned subconsciously how to forestall request from our hearer that we repeat our sentence. In somewhat later years most of us eliminate even the chance of restating or recasting our periods by making them a little clearer than any listener will require. While we are aiming at negative excellence, in repairing in- felicitous diction, we should not forget the positive merits by which literature lives and grows. All good writers are expected to compass various verbal felicities of their own. Each of us hits upon happy turns of phrase, from time to time, in oral English. We should aspire and expect to reach similar indi- viduality of excellence in our written styles. Corresponding to the immortal phrase in poetry are high and noble groupings of elements in forms of prose. All our best writers, as Alice Meynell, Howells, Galsworthy, Pater, Hawthorne, have set their standards upon this plane. We shall not perhaps soon share their art of minting golden phrases, but we can make ourselves of their company by noting and pondering and priz- ing their finest work. Our language is still in a plastic state. It can be vulgarized, it can be sublimated, beyond known lim- its. We can help refine it by refusing to write ill, and by utilizing each best expression that comes to us in a flash of insight. We shall aid perhaps not less by owning literary al- legiance to none but the world’s great masters. EXERCISES 1. Improve the English in the following sentences: No one much noticed the halo on Latmos’s top till Keats called attention to it by laying the scene of Endymion on it. SOLECISMS AND INFELICITIES 303 I came home and found her gone. I had just time to get my breath, and so had he. The size of the mob was formidable, and expecting its enlargement, I sent for the mounted police. 2. Write the second installment of your family history. 3. Examine the first pages in Chapter II of Bancroft’s History of the United States, and report your impressions concerning the clearness and effectiveness of its style. 4. Examine two or three chapters of Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, and, comparing its style with Bancroft’s, make a criti- cism and appreciation. 5. Compare with your impressions the criticisms of these au- thors quoted in Allibone’s Dictionary. In default of Allibone, consult like judgments in the encyclopedias. Report the views, concerning each, that seem most conservative and sound, and jus- tify your conclusions. 6. Consider which of the textbooks or reference books in his- tory is clearest and most effectual in style. Find and report the reasons for your judgment. 7. Make an idiomatic translation of some section or other di- vision in the Latin or German author that you are now studying. Try whether you can eliminate all foreign or unnatural locutions. 8. Read the first three papers in Holmes’s Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, making note of your impressions as you read. Write an appreciative criticism, showing what, in tone, matter, or method, you would wish altered. g. Examine the style of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as also the char- acterizations, and the paragraphs, and make report of your im- pressions. 10. Read five of Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales, and compare in style, character-drawing, paragraphing, and vividness, with short stories of the day. 11. Take up any one of the accessible new books, and report whether its style is heavy, careless, flippant, vulgar, or standard- ized. 12. In the writings of Walter Savage Landor find examples of the Concrete Manner, and show how they resemble and do not resemble the forms studied in the last chapter. CHAPTER XXX SYSTEMATIC CRITICISM WRITER in The New York Times Review of Books not long since ventured the dictum that the excellence of a book lies in four directions,— riot, 2. Description, 3. Character Drawing, 4. Dialogue or Conversation. Evidently this critic assumes that “book” means “novel.” Even admitting that it is not necessary to inquire in what directions the excellencies of other literary forms would “lie,” we may observe that there are merits in fiction which this anal- ysis does not recognize. We might accept his four points of worth, but should include with them (5) Narration, (6) Orig- inality, as defined and illustrated in Chapter XXI, and (7) Exposition, incidental or other. Then should we not add (8) Clearness, and (9) Takingness and Effectiveness of Style? Indeed, were one to attempt specifying points by which in- ductive criticism might proceed, it would be necessary to recog- nize other qualities not indicated or implied under these heads. One certainly would be the merit of adaptation between parts, as well as between means and end. There is also the author’s individual way of doing things, which in the large is called Art, but in minor matters of execution, Technic. As these are complex notions, and have been covered to some extent by studies made already in narration, description, character-draw- ing, presentation of moods or emotions, and drafting or strat- egy of approach, we leave them out of our first attempt at a division of values. Adding Proportion to the nine essentials already enumerated, we shall have ten points on which conflict- ing claims to literary recognition might be appraised. 304 SYSTEMATIC CRITICISM 305 There seems small question that the Times critic is funda- mentally right in his assumption that the excellence of a piece of literature is composite, a resultant of approvals and disap- provals, as in the reader’s mind, of distinct parts or features. A few years ago, the proposal to submit a literary production to analysis would have been discouraged. It was indeed al- leged that conscious recognition or estimation of elements would spoil all enjoyment of a literary product. This stricture, however, has not been thought applicable to analytical criti- cism or appreciation of master-works in painting or sculpture. It has not been heard of concerning literary judgments for some time. A corollary to the objection was that a literary masterpiece was an organic unity, and not to be looked upon as constructed of lower organic elements or units. We seem to be emerging from the personal, a priore stage in criticism. Once we did not separate or distinguish our im- pressions. We took the whole and estimated it in the gross, refusing to make note of lesser units or elements of value. Even if it were the method generally in classic times, the modern world is not bound, under an inductive system of things, to perpetuate it. It was once the accepted mode of adjudging the blue ribbon in dog shows and county fairs. We have now begun to judge debates, prize drills, and contests for the best short stories and plays and novels and essays on economic subjects, by points. In considering the rank of a given writer, we shall come short of exact and intelligent criticism if any one of the ten essen- tials, just detailed, is ignored. Good characterization and un- natural dialogue offset each other. To praise the character- drawing and refuse attention to the bad diction in which it is couched is as unfair as to condemn the style and avoid men- tion of the characterization. Still more necessary is it to judge on all these points when two or more writers are concerned. When but a single quality is considered, comparison and a just conclusion should not be difficult. When all the merits or deficiencies of two or more authors are supposably passed in review, the task becomes formidable. Yet few critics hesi- tate to hazard unqualified judgments, in such cases, as to the major or the greatest worth. | 306 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Criticism is an attempt to estimate, with reference to stand- ards of perfection, the worth of objects produced by art. But there are as yet no established or accepted standards of any kind. Criticism therefore amounts to little more than an esti- mation, according to the critic’s individual ideas of truth and of the beautiful, of the qualities in a given work or writer. Judgments as to literary values are in consequence singularly personal and conflicting. Each critic attempts to anticipate, by his own unsupported conclusions, the verdict of the thou- sands who compose the ultimate court of literary judicature. He may sometimes easily be right. He has been found too often to be absurdly wrong. A generation or more ago Bicker- steth’s Yesterday, To-day, and Forever was declared by critics of distinction to rank with Paradise Lost. That strange poem is not even mentioned now. Any attempt to judge what work of art is best, or better, must involve primarily recognition of all qualities that make for ex- cellence or its opposite in each of the examples considered. Some new merit may appear in one, and be absent from the others. Just valuation of the excess in the one, and the de- fault in others, must go into the summation. If we are to com- pare Meredith with Carlyle, it will not be just to match merely the philosophy of the one with the philosophy of the other. Nor must we set The Egoist in the shadow of Sartor Resartus, but over against the extant chapters of Wotton Reinfred. Again, measures must be taken to correct aberrations of judg- ment. The usual method is to require at least three judges. This is not unknown in literary criticism, though common in fixing merit in other arts than letters. It seems certain that in no long time some systematic means of comparing rival literary claims will be proposed. The pub- lic is growing intolerant of the personal and unscientific tem- per in which its favorite authors are dispatched. To familiar- ize ourselves better with the need, we might each practice some general evaluation under ten heads of merit, five of matter and five of manner, and compare results. Leaving aside the Times idea of treating fiction, let us try out, at least 95, saciooreb the prize essays, or orations, some Pf" WwiSional or suggestive scheme like the one now ventured: “ \, SSIU ~SULyD *petejue soueu |e ‘hot ye “ozo eoeoeoeveeee eevee eens uo ssau -2494IU0D) qTAaNNVA JO} %OOT JO wns 94} pjaté pjnom sjutod uo} [je uo WoTpajIOg ‘¢ ‘Z ‘[ pasequinu sooeds 9y4} url a}1soddo ee ssau -40919 eoeceeeeeee 14 eosee 4110 -uosdad ee ssau -Sno14as YS 2UDZBAO poroqus oq 0} soweN eooere ee ee e@eoeeeeee eooeeee ae eoevereee ee eeeereees eevee eevee oeoewreeee oere eee eee eeeeeeene oe eee eens tee eee one eee eee Apu) &4110NO) jpuor4 -1S0gxq qaLLVAN Cj10U “12140 (Z) (9) (s) (r) (¢) eevee (Z) (Tt) 308 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Exercises of this sort will be found helpful also in bringing home to each one of us the complexities and uncertainties of responsible criticism. We shall feel ourselves constituted, for the time being, as members of a jury having the well-being, and in some sense perhaps the future, of our fellows in our hands. Our decisions will be like, in kind, to the public ver- dict, which is framed in a never-adjourning ecumenical coun- cil of all wise minds, and which for any given age is final. In- deed there should be exercises in constructive criticism, as a part of the work, in all advanced study of literature and au- thors. The art of literature is the greatest of all arts. The great- ness of art consists in the completeness of its utterance, of its “saying.” Painting and music declare the vision of the seer who has turned artist or composer, for the moment, in order to make his seeing known. Language is the means by which the vision of the poet must be told. As a medium of expres- sion, it is superior to forms, to colors, to chiaro-oscuro, to tones which his rival artists use. But neither can he, more than they, express the products of insight completely. “The highest,” says Goethe, among the greatest of modern seers, “cannot be spoken.” But while the poet cannot set forth, in words, his highest meaning, he can inspire an experience of it in another by means of literary art. I cannot make over my conception to my reader, but I can enable him to attain one like it for himself. By appeals to his imagination, I can stimulate him to see, if not the same vision, at least one its counterpart, perhaps stronger, nobler. The artist cannot command pigments that will express all hues, nor can the composer find tones to sug- gest all passions, or indeed all moods. But literature has such power in its enablements and imaginative expedients that its limitations lie more in the insight of its makers than in their art. Hence, to judge literary values fully, one must recognize more than ten points of value, often more than twenty or any other number that can be prescribed beforehand. In a new masterwork, new illuminating devices may appear. Just appreciation is the despair of true and faithful spirits, for they SYSTEMATIC CRITICISM 309 must often fail of the artist’s deeper seeing, fail of his fresher technic of expression. The art of literature is hardly beyond its infancy. We can but pray that critics of the future may © deal less confidently with the discoverers of their time than the critics of the last century dealt with Shelley and Keats and Browning when these voices first ventured to speak in an un- known language to the world. EXERCISES 1. Choose out from Harper’s or Scribner’s two short stories, read each with care, and estimate, by general impressions, the lit- erary value of the one as against the other. Make a record of your judgments. 2. By the system of points suggested in the present chapter, make a criticism and appreciation of the same stories. Compare the results with your former judgments. 3. Using the same material, and the same system, review and discuss the ten points of literary value, and by major vote upon these severally make up, as a class, a verdict upon each specimen. Compare results with the individual judgments obtained before. 4. Devise a new system of ten points, five of matter, five of manner, and by it evaluate three debates prepared on the same side of some live question of the hour. 5. Write the third installment of your family history. 6. Let the several family histories be judged, each by all mem- bers except its author, with respect to merit in description, narra- tion, characterization, exposition, and other points of worth. Let the judgment of the class be determined on all these points, and on each history as a whole. 7. What is the form-type in the student’s eye-shade? What, in the hobble skirt? 8 Give your judgment as to the ake quality of these ex- amples respectively :— His dark hair grew back in a sickle on each temple. St. John floundered up out of his chair with seal-like struggles. “Do you want the furniture,” he panted. As I watched him I was irresistibly reminded of a pure- blooded well-trained fox-hound as it dashes backward and 810 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY forward through the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent. 9. Show what is wrong with the following sentences severally, and correct: Having had many years of varied experience, this school was established. A skein of black shoestrings was suspended from each corner of the vender’s cart. I have forgotten who you said it was expected to have sing. 10. Let each member of the class search out and determine what, in his judgment, is the best example of clear and attractive English in current periodicals, and report in an appreciative criti- cism, 11. Have all the selections considered in committee of the whole, and, at the end of the conference, find whether any single style is approved by all the members. 12. Show what specific arguments and views are concretized in (p. 292) the “Cornelia and Bacchus” contribution. 13. Examine Browning’s Men and Women series and report upon any three poems that you find presented in the Concrete Manner. 14. Find which of Tennyson’s longer poems has been planned and executed in the Concrete Manner, and discuss the art. CHAPTER XXXI ILLUSTRATIONS I Characteristics By EarL ANTHONY COOPER SHAFTESBURY VOL, III, MISCELLANY I, CHAPTER III T is a different Cafe indeed, when the Title of Epiftle is improperly given to fuch Works as were never writ in any other view than that of being made publick, or to ferve as Ex- ercifes or Specimens of the Wit of their Compofer. Such were thofe infinite Numbers of Greek and Latin Epiftles, writ by the antient Sophifts, Grammarians, or Rhetoricians; where we find the real Character of the Epzftle, the genuine Stile and Manners of the correfponding Partys fometimes imitated ; but at other times not so much as aim’d at, nor any Meafures of Hiftorical Truth preferv’d. Such perhaps we may elteem even the Letters of a SENECA to his Friend Lucizttus. Or, {uppofing that Philofophical Courtier had really such a Cor- respondency; and, at several times, had sent so many fair Epiftles, honeftly fign’d and seal’d, to his Country-Friend at a diftance; it appears however by the Epiftles themselves, in their proper Order (if they may be said to have any) that after a few Attempts at the beginning, the Author by degrees lofes fight of his Correfpondent, and takes the World in gen- eral for his Reader or Difciple. He falls into the random way of Mifcellaneous Writing; fays every-where great and noble Things, in and out of the way, accidentally as Words lead him (for with thefe he plays perpetually;) with infinite Wit, but 311 312 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY with little or no Coherence; without a Shape or Body to his Work; without a real Beginning, a Middle, or an End. Of a hundred and twenty four Epiltles, you may, if you pleafe, make five Hundred, or half a Score. A great-one, for initance, you may divide into five or fix. The Unity of the Writing will be the fame: The Life and Spirit full as well preferv’d. °T is not only whole Letters or Pages you may change and man- age thus at pleafure: Every Period, every Sentence almolt, is independent: and may be taken afunder, transpos’d, poftpon’d, anticipated, or fet in any new Order, as you fancy. Tus is the Manner of Writing, fo much admir’d and imi- tated in our Age, that we have ficarce the Idea of any other Model. We know little, indeed, of the Difference between one Model or Character of Writing and another. All runs to the fame Tune, and beats exactly one and the fame Measure. Nothing, one wou’d think, cou’d be more tedious than this uni- form Pace. The common Amble or Canterbury is not, I am perfuaded, more tirefom to a good Rider, than this SEE-saw of Essay-Writers is to an able Reader. The juft compofer of a legitimate Piece is like an able Traveller, who exactly meaf- ures his Journey, confiders his Ground, premeditates his Stages, and Intervals of Relaxation and Intention, to the very Conclu- fion of his Undertaking, that he happily arrives where he firit propol’d when he fet out. He is not prefently upon the Spur, or in his full Career; but walks his Steed leifurely out of his Stable, fettles himself in his Stirrups, and when fair Road and Seafon offer, puts on perhaps to a round Trot; thence into a Gallop, and after a while takes up. As Down, or Meadow, or fhady Lane prefent themfelves, he accordingly futes his Pace, favours his Palfry, and is fure not to bring him puffing, and in a heat, into his laft Inn. But the Poft-way is become highly fafhionable with modern Authors. The very same Strokes fets you out, and brings you in. Nothing ftays, or interrupts. Hill or Valley ; rough or fmooth; thick or thin: No Difference; no Variation. When an Author fits down to write, he knows no other Bufinefs he has, than to be witty, and take care that his Periods be well-turn’d, or (as they commonly fay) run fmooth. In the manner, he doubts not to gain the Character of bright. When he has writ as many Pages as he likes, or ILLUSTRATIONS 313 as his Run of Fancy wou’d permit; he then perhaps confiders what Name he had beft give his new Writing: whether he fhou’d call it Letter, Effay, Mifcellany, or ought elfe. The Bookfeller perhaps is to determine this at laft, when all, befides the Preface, Epiftle Dedicatory, and Title-Page, is difpatch’d. Incertus Scamnum, faceretne Priapum. Deus inde Ego! Horat. Sat. 8. Lib. 1 oo On Luxury By Viscount ST. JOHN BOLINGBROKE A discourse on Operas, and the gayer pleasures of the town, may seem to be too trifling for the important scene of affairs in which we are at present engaged; but I must own my fears, that they will bear too great a part in the suc- cess of a war, to make the consideration of them foreign to it. A very little reflection on history will suggest this observa- tion, that every nation has made either a great or inconsiderable figure in the world, as it has fallen into luxury or resisted its temptations. What people are more distinguished than the Persians under Cyrus, nursed up in virtue, and inured to labor and toil? Yet—in the short space of two hundred and twenty years ‘—they became so contemptible under Darius, as scarce to give honor to the conqueror’s sword. The Spartans, and the long-rulers of the world, the Romans, speak the same language; and I wish future history may not furnish more modern ex- amples. When the mind is enervated by luxury, the body soon falls an easy victim to it; for how is it possible to imagine, that a man can be capable of the great and generous sentiments which virtue inspires, whose mind is filled with the soft ideas, and wanton delicacies that pleasure must infuse? And were it possible to be warmed with such notions, could it ever put them in execution? For toils and fatigues would be difficulties un- surmountable to a soul dissolved in ease. Nor are these imagi- nary, speculative ideas of a closet; but such as have been the guide and policies of the wisest states. Of this we have the most remarkable instance in Herodotus. “The Persians, 1 Liv., lib. 9, cap. 19. 314 ILLUSTRATIONS 315 after their great and extended conquests, desired Cyrus to give them leave to remove out of their own barren and mountainous country into one more blest by the indulgence of Providence. But that great and wise prince, revolving the effect in his mind, bid them do as they would; telling them at the same time, that for the future they must not expect to command, but obey; for Providence had so ordered it, that an effeminate race of people were the certain produce of a delicious country.” What regard the great historian had to this opinion may be easily col- lected from his reserving it for the conclusion of this excellent piece. And the case is directly the same, whether pleasures are the natural product of a country, or adventitious exotics. They will have the same effect, and cause the same extended ruin. How often have they revenged the captive’s cause and made the conqueror’s sword the instrument of his own un- doing? Capua destroyed the bravest army which Italy ever saw, flushed with conquest, and commanded by Hannibal. The moment Capua was taken, that moment the walls of Carthage trembled. What was it that destroyed the republic of Athens, but the conduct of Pericles;? who by his pernicious policies first debauched the people’s minds with shows and festivals, and all the studied arts of ease and luxury; that he might, in the meantime, securely guide the reins of empire, and riot in dominion? He first laid the foundation of Philip’s power; nor had a man of Macedon ever thought of enslaving Greece, if Pericles had not first made them slaves to pleasure. That great statesman Tiberius * clearly saw what was the surest instrument of arbitrary power; and therefore refused to have luxury re- dressed, when application was made to him in the senate for that purpose. Artful princes have frequently introduced it with that very view. Davilla tells us, that in an interview and semblance of treaty with the king of Navar, Catherine of Medicis broke the prince’s power more with the insidious gaieties of her court, than many battles before had gone. But there is a single passage in Herodotus,* which will supply the place of more quotations. “When Cyrus had received an ac- count that the Lydians had revolted from him, he told Creesus, 2 Plut. in Peric., and Demost. Orat. ® Tac. An., lib. 2, cap. 33. 4 Herod., lib. 1. cap. 155. 316 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY with a good deal of emotion, that he had almost determined to make them all slaves. Croesus begged him to pardon them; but, says he, that they may no more rebel, or be troublesome to you, command them to lay aside their arms, to wear long vests and buskins. Order them to sing and play on the harp; to drink and debauch; and you will soon see their spirits broken, and themselves changed from men into women; so that they will no more rebel, or be uneasy to you for the future.” And the event answered the advice. They are puny politicians, who attack a people’s liberty directly. The means are dan- gerous, and the success precarious. Notions of liberty are in- terwoven with our very being; and the least suspicion of its being in danger fires the soul with a generous indignation. But he is the statesman formed for ruin and destruction, whose wily head knows how to disguise the fatal hook with baits of pleasure, which his artful ambition dispenses with a lavish hand, and makes himself popular in undoing. Thus are the easy, thoughtless crowd made the instruments of their own slavery ; nor do they know the fatal mine is laid till they feel the goodly pile come tumbling on their heads. This is the finished politician ; the darling son of Tacitus and Machiavel. But, thanks to Providence, the sacred monuments of history extend the short contracted span of human life, and give us years in books. These point out the glorious landmarks for our safety ; and bid us be wise in time, before luxury has made too great a progress among us. Operas and masquerades, with all the politer elegancies of a wanton age, are much less to be regarded for their expense, great as it is, than for the tendency which they have to deprave our manners. Music has something so peculiar in it, that it exerts a willing tyranny over the mind and forms the ductile soul into whatever shape the melody directs. Wise nations have observed its influence, and have therefore kept it under proper regulations. The Spar- tans,° vigilantly provident for the people’s safety, took from the famed Timotheus’s harp the additional strings, as giving music a degree of softness inconsistent with their discipline. The divine Plato is expressly of opinion, that the music of a country cannot be changed, and the public laws remain un- 5 Cicero, lib. 2, de leg. cap. 39. . ILLUSTRATIONS 317 affected. Heroes will be heroes, even in their music. Soft and wanton are the warbled songs of Paris;® but Achilles” sings the godlike deeds of heroes. A noble, manly music will place virtue in its most beautiful light, and be the most engaging incentive to it. A well-wrought story, attended with its pre- vailing charms, will transport the soul out of itself; fire it with glorious emulation; and lift the man into a hero; but the soft Italian music relaxes and unnerves the soul, and sinks it into weakness; so that while we receive their music, we at the same time are adopting their manners. The effects of it will appear in the strongest light from the fate of the people of Sybaris; a town in Italy, strong and wealthy ; blessed with all the goods of fortune, and skilled in all the arts of luxury and ease; which they carried to so great an excess, that their very horses were taught to move and form themselves as the music directed. Their constant enemies, the people of Crotona, observing this, brought a great number of harps and pipes into the field, and when the battle began, the music played; upon which these well-bred horses immediately began to dance; which so discon- certed the whole army, that 300,000 were killed, and the whole people destroyed. Though this story seems a little fabulous, yet it contains at least a very good moral. What effect Italian music might have on our polite warriors at Gibraltar, I cannot take upon me to say; but I wish our luxury at home may not influence our courage abroad. Gitorer tine T,) Ods 1S. . Grataque foemints, ‘ Imbelli cithara, carmina divides. 7 Hom, Iliad. 9, 189. 1Gei Constantinople By EDMONDO pI AMICIS I. THE ARRIVAL The emotion that I experienced on entering Constantinople made me almost forget all that I had seen in the ten days’ voyage from the Straits of Messina to the mouth of the Bosphorus. The Ionian Sea, blue and motionless as a lake, the distant mountains of the Morea rose-tinted by the first rays of the sun, the Archipelago gilded from the sunset, the ruins of Athens, the Gulf of Salonica, Lemnos, Tenedos, the Dardanelles, and many persons and things that had diverted me during the voyage, all faded so fully from my fancy, after seeing the Golden Horn, that, should I now wish to describe them, I must work more from imagination than from memory. In order that my first page may issue warm and living from my mind, it must begin on the last night of my voyage, in the middle of the Sea of Marmora, at the moment when the cap- tain of the ship came up to me and my friend Yunk, and, putting his hands on my shoulders, said, “Gentlemen, at day- break to-morrow morning, we shall see the first minarets of Stamboul.” Ah, you smile, my good reader, full of money and ennui; you who, years back, when the whim seized you of making a trip to Constantinople, packed your valise, replenished your purse, and within four and twenty hours set out quietly as on a short visit to the country, undecided up to the last moment whether it were not better to take the route to Baden-Baden! If the captain of the ship had said the same to you, “To- morrow at daybreak we shall see Stamboul,” you would have answered him phlegmatically, “That is agreeable to me.” But 318 ILLUSTRATIONS $19 if you had nursed the wish for ten years, had spent many winter evenings poring over maps of the East in a melancholy mood, had inflamed your imagination with the reading of a hundred volumes, had wandered over half of Europe with the sole purpose of consoling yourself for not being able to visit the other half, had been nailed down for a year to a desk to compass just this design, had made a thousand little sacri- fices, computed the expense again and again, built castles upon castles in the air, and fought many little domestic battles over it; had you in fine passed nine sleepless nights upon the sea, with that immense and luminous image before your eyes, so happy as to be conscious of remorse at thought of loved ones left at home; then you might have comprehended what these words mean, “To-morrow at daybreak, we shall see the first minarets of Stamboul”; and, instead of answering phlegmati- cally, “That is agreeable to me,” you would have struck a heavy blow, with your fist, on the bulwarks of the ship, as I did. One great pleasure for me and my friend was the profound conviction that our vast expectations could not be delusive. About Constantinople there was no doubt at all. Even the most distrusting traveler is sure about his facts; no one has ever experienced disillusionment concerning it. Nor is any fascination of grand memories or the habit of admiration in- volved in it. It is one universal and sovereign beauty, before which poet and archeologist, ambassador and merchant, the princess and the sailor, the son of the North as well as the son of the South, all cry out alike with wonder. It is the most beautiful spot on earth by the judgment of all the world. Writers of travels, arriving there, lose straightway their heads. Perthusier stammers, Tournefort declares that human speech is impotent, Toqueville thinks himself transported to another world, La Croix is intoxicated, the Viscount de Marcellus be- comes ecstatic, Lamartine gives thanks to God, Gautier doubts the reality of what he sees; and all heap image upon image, affect scintillations of style, and torture themselves in vain to find expressions that shall not fall miserably below the mean- ing to be told. Chateaubriand alone describes his entrance into Constantinople with an air of tranquillity that amounts to 320 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY stupor. But he does not refrain from saying that it is the most beautiful spectacle in the universe. And if the famous Lady Mary Wortley Montague, proclaiming the same judgment, pref- aces it with a ‘“‘perhaps,’’ we must suppose it done to reserve the first place to her own beauty, by which she set much store. There is, however, an unimpressionable German who says that the most charming illusions of youth and even the dreams of first love are pale imaginings in comparison with that sense of sweetness which pervades the soul at the sight of these enchanting places; and a learned Frenchman affirms that the first impression that Constantinople makes is one of terror. Let him who reads imagine the excitement which these words of flame, a hundred times repeated, were bound to arouse in the brain of a clever painter of four and twenty, and of a sorry poet of twenty-eight. But by no means did this famous praise of Constantinople satisfy us, and we sought the testi- mony of the sailors. And also they, poor rugged folk, to ex- press an idea of such beauty, felt the need of some simile or word of power, and they strove for it turning their eyes this way and that, and rubbing their hands, and made attempts at description which such sounds of voice as seem to come from far, and with those large groping gestures with which people of this sort express wonder when words do not suffice. “To come of a fine morning into Constantinople,’ said the head steersman, “believe me, gentlemen, is a splendid moment in the life of a man.” The weather also smiled on us. It was a warm calm night. The sea caressed the sides of the vessel with a gentle mur- muring. ‘The masts and small cordage showed, in relief, dis- tinct and moveless against a sky studded with stars. The ship did not appear in the least to move. At the prow lay a group of Turks, smoking their narghiles, with their faces turned towards the moon, which seemed to set their turbans in a rim of silver. At the stern was a crowd of people from every country, and among them a famished-looking company of Greek comedians who had embarked at the Pirzeus. I see still, in the midst of a brood of Russian babies on the way to Odessa with their mother, the charming face of the little Olga, all astonishment that I could not understand her lan- ILLUSTRATIONS 321 guage, and provoked at having asked me three times the same question without receiving an intelligible reply. I have on one side a fat and dirty Greek priest, with hat like an inverted basket, who is searching with a glass for the Archipelago of Marmora. On the other side is an evangelical English minister, rigid and frigid as a statue, who for three days has not uttered a word or looked a living creature in the face. Before me are two handsome Athenian sisters in red caps with hair falling in tresses over their shoulders, who, the moment one looks at them, turn both together towards the sea in order to be seen in profile. A little further on, an Armenian merchant is passing the beads of his oriental rosary through his fingers, there is a group of Jews in antique garb, there are Albanians with white petticoats, there is a French governess who affects an air of melancholy, and there are a few travelers, of the ordinary class, who show no sign by which it can be known from what coun- try they come or what their business is. In the midst of these folk is a little Turkish family, made up of a papa in fez, a mamma veiled, and two babies in full pantaloons, all crouched on a heap of mattresses and many-colored cushions under an awning, and surrounded by various belongings of every form and color. How a close approach to Constantinople makes itself felt! There was at once an unusual activity. Almost all the faces that could be seen in the light of the ship’s lantern were happy and animated. The Russian children leaped about their mother, calling out the ancient Russian name of Stamboul,—‘‘Zave- gorod! Zavegorod!” Here and there among the groups one hears the names of Galata, of Pera, of Scutari, of Bujukdere, of Terapia, and they shone in my fancy like the first glitter of fireworks about to burst into a fleece of flame. Even the sailors were happy to approach a place where, as they said, all the ills of life for an hour at least could be forgotten. Meanwhile at the prow, extraordinary activity was noticed in the midst of that heap of turbans; even the lazy and impassive Mussulmans beheld now with the eye of imagination the fantastic outline of Ummelunia, the mother of the world, undulating on the horizon; of that city as the Quardn says, of which “one side looks upon the land and two sides look upon the sea.” It 822 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY seemed that the ship, even without the motive force of steam, must go forward of itself, thrust forward by the impetus of impatience and longing which chafed along its decks. From time to time I leaned on the railing to look out upon the sea, and it seemed that a hundred confused voices spoke to me in the murmur of the waters. They were the voices of all who loved me, and who said, “On, on, son, brother, friend; go on, rejoice yourself in your Constantinople. You have earned the right, be happy, and God be with you.” Not until nearly midnight did the travelers begin to go be- low. My friend and I were the last to descend, and we went at a snail’s pace. It was repugnant to us to shut up within four walls a joy for which all the circuit of the Propontis seemed straitened. When we were halfway down the stair, we heard the voice of the captain inviting us to come up, in the morning, upon the bridge. “Be up before sunrise,” he called, showing himself at the companionway. “I will have | the one who hangs back pitched into the sea.” A more superfluous threat was never made since the world began. I did not close an eye. I believe that the youthful Mahomet the Second, agitated on that famous night of Adria- nople by his vision of the city of Constantine, did not tumble his couch with so many restless movements as I made in my berth, during those four hours of expectation. To control my nerves, I tried counting up to a thousand, keeping my eyes fixed on the white wreaths of foam which were constantly rising about the porthole of my stateroom. I hummed airs to the rhythmical exhaust of the ship’s engine. But all was useless. I was feverish, my breath at times failed me, the night seemed endless. At the first streak of dawn I leapt down. Yunk was already on his feet. We dressed ourselves in mad haste, and in three bounds were upon the deck. Beshrew our fate! Fog! A thick fog covered the horizon on every side. Rain seemed certain. The grand spectacle of our entry into Constantinople was spoiled, our most ardent hope, deluded, our voyage, in a word, wasted. I was overwhelmed. ILLUSTRATIONS 823 At that moment the captain appeared, with his accustomed smile. There was no need of speech. As soon as he saw, he under- stood, and clapping his hand upon my shoulder, said, in tones of consolation: “Nothing, nothing at all. Do not lose heart, gentlemen. Rather, bless this fog. Thanks to it, we shall make the finest entry that you could have wished. Within two hours we shall have a marvelously clear sky. You can rely on what I say.” I felt my life come back. We went up on the officers’ deck. At the prow, all the Turks were sitting cross-legged on their rugs, with their faces turned towards Constantinople. In a few minutes, all the other passengers came up, armed with glasses of every form, and posted themselves in a long line against the left-hand railing, as in the gallery of a theater. A fresh breeze was blow- ing. Noone spoke. All eyes and all the glasses were little by little turned towards the northern shore of the Sea of Mar- mora. But as yet there was nothing to be seen. The fog was now reduced to a whitish band along the hori- zon, above which the sky showed clear and golden. Directly in front of us, and in line of the ship’s course, con- fusedly appeared the little archipelago of the Nine Islands of the Princes, the Demonesi of the ancients, a pleasure resort in the time of the Lower Empire, and now serving the inhabitants of Constantinople as a place for gatherings and outings. The two shores of the Sea of Marmora were still completely hidden. Only after we had waited an hour upon the bridge did we begin to see. But it is impossible to understand any account of the entry to Constantinople unless we have clearly in our minds the configuration of the city. Let the reader suppose that he has before him the mouth of the Bosphorus, that arm of the sea which divides Asia from Europe and joins the Sea of Mar- mora with the Black Sea. Standing in this position, he has on his right hand the Asiatic coast, and the European shore upon his left. Here is ancient Thrace, there the ancient Anatolia. Advancing now, threading this arm of the sea, he finds on 824 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY his left hand, before the mouth is fairly past, a gulf, a very narrow roadstead, which forms almost a right angle with the Bosphorus and penetrates for several miles into European ter- ritory, and curved like the horn of an ox. From this is derived its name of the Golden Horn, or horn of plenty, since to it flowed, when it was the port of Byzantium, the riches of three continents. In the angle of the European shore,—which is on one side bathed by the Sea of Marmora, and on the other by the Golden Horn, where stood the ancient Byzantium,—trises upon seven hills Stamboul, the Turkish city. In the other angle, bathed by the waters of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, stand Galata and Pera, the Frankish cities. Facing the mouth of the Golden Horn, on the hills of the Asiatic side, rises. the city of Scutari. Thus what is called Constantinople is formed of three great cities divided by the sea, one opposite to another, and the third fronting the other two, and so near, each to each, that the buildings at either of the three shores can be seen distinctly from the other two, and at as little distance as one side of the Seine or the Thames from the other at widest points in Paris or London. The point of the triangle on which Stamboul rises, bending towards the Golden Horn, is the fa- mous Point Seraglio, which till the last moment hides from the eyes of those approaching from the Sea of Marmora, the view of the two shores of the Horn, or the largest and most beautiful part of Constantinople. It was the captain who, with his seaman’s eye, was the first to catch the first glimpse of Stamboul. The two Athenian ladies, the Russian family, the English minister, Yunk, and I, and all the others who, with us, were coming to Constantinople for the first time, were standing about the Captain in a close group, silent, and straining our eyes in vain against the fog, when he, stretching his arm to the left pouieds the European shore, called out, “Signori, behold the first gleam!” It was a white point, the top of a very high minaret, the lower part of which was still concealed. Every glass was at once leveled at it, every eye was fixed on that small opening in the fog as if to make it larger. The ship was rapidly ad- x a ee ee.) ILLUSTRATIONS 325 vancing. After some minutes, appeared near the minaret a vague spot, then two, then three, then many spots which little by little took the shape of houses, and began to extend themselves in a lengthening row. Before us and on our right everything was still veiled in fog. What we saw gradually opening was the part of Stamboul which stretched out in the form of a curve for about four Italian miles, on the north shore of the Sea of Marmora, between Point Seraglio and the castle of the Seven Towers. But the hill of the Seraglio was still hidden. Behind the houses emerged one after another the minarets, very tall and white, and their summits, touched by the rays of the sun, were of rose color. Under the houses be- gan to appear the ancient battlemented walls, of dusky color, reinforced at equal distances by large towers, which form around the city an unbroken girdle, and against which break the waves of the sea. After a short interval, a tract of about two miles in the length of the city was in sight; but, to say the truth, the spectacle did not answer to my expectations. We were off the point where Lamartine had asked himself, “Is this Constantinople?” and cried out, “What a delusion!” The hills were still hidden, nothing was in sight but the shore, the houses formed a more elongated thread, the city seemed all on a level. “Captain,” I too exclaimed, “is this Constantinople?’ The Captain took me by the arm, and said, pointing forward with his hand, “Oh, man of little faith, look there!’ I looked and uttered an exclamation of amazement. An enormous shade, a massive building of great lightness as well as height, still shrouded in a veil of vapor, rose to the heaven from the summit of a hill, and rounded gloriously into the air, in the midst of four slender and lofty minarets, whose silvery points glittered in the first rays of the sun. “Santa Sophia,” shouted a sailor; and one of the two Athenian ladies murmured, “Hagia Sophia!” [Holy Wisdom!]. The Turks at the prow rose to their feet. But already before and around the great basilica, other enormous domes and minarets, thick and com- mingled like a forest of gigantic palm trees without branches, showed in outline against the fog. “The mosque of Sultan Ahmed,” called the Captain, pointing; “the mosque of Bajazet, the mosque of Osman, the mosque of Laleli, the mosque of 326 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Soliman.” But no one heeded him any more. The fog lifted rapidly, and on every side leaped forth mosques, towers, masses of verdure, houses upon houses; and as we advanced, higher rose the city, and more distinctly displayed her grand, broken, capricious outlines, white, green, rosy, glittering; and the Hill of the Seraglio showed clear and entire its gentle form against the gray background of mist. Four miles of city, all that part of Stamboul which looks out upon the Sea of Marmora, lay extended before us, and her dark walls, and her houses of a thousand colors were reflected in the clear and shining water as in a mirror. On a sudden the ship came to a full stop. All the passengers crowded about the Captain and inquired the reason. He explained to us that, to advance now, it was necessary to wait till the fog had opened. It was in fact still hiding the mouth of the Bosphorus as with a thick curtain. But after less than a minute, it was possible to advance again, but with the utmost caution. We were approaching the Hill of the Old Seraglio. Here the curiosity of the company became feverish. “Turn your head that way,’ said the Captain to me, “till we are opposite the whole.” I turned away and kept my eyes fixed upon a deck chair, which seemed to me to be dancing about. “Now look!” said the Captain, after perhaps a minute. I turned. The ship had stopped again. We were directly in front of the hill, very close to the shore. It is a rather high hill, all clothed with cypresses, pines, firs, and great plane trees, which project their branches beyond the walls, so far as to throw shadows upon the water. In the midst of this mass of verdure, rise in disorder, separated and in groups, as if scattered at random, tops of kiosks, little pa- vilions crowned with galleries, silvery cupolas, little buildings of rare and graceful forms, with grated windows and arabesque portals; all white, delicate, half hidden, leaving fancy to divine a labyrinth of gardens, corridors, courts, recesses; a whole city shut up in a grove; separated from the world, full of mystery and sadness. At that moment the sun came out upon it, though it was covered still with a veil of thinnest ILLUSTRATIONS 327 mist. No living creature was in sight, there was to be heard no slightest sound. All the passengers stood with their eyes fixed on that hill crowned with the memories of four cen- turies of glory, of pleasure, of loves, of conspiracy, of blood; court, citadel, and tomb of the great Ottoman Empire. No one spoke, no one moved. Then, suddenly, the mate called out, “Signori, you can see Scutari!” We turned towards the Asiatic shore. There lay Scutari, scattered and stretching out of sight over the tops and sides of its lofty hills, veiled in the luminous morning mists, smiling, fresh as if called into being at the moment by the touch of a magic wand. Who can describe that spectacle? The language with which we describe our cities is not sufficient to give us an idea of that immense variety of colors and of views, of that marvelous confusion of city and country, of gay and of au- stere, of European, of Oriental, of fanciful, select, and grand. Imagine a city composed of ten thousand little purple and yel- low houses, and of ten thousand gardens of luxuriant green, of a hundred mosques as white as snow; beyond, a forest of enormous cypresses, the largest cemetery in the East; at the end, boundless white barracks, villages grouped upon heights, behind which emerge other villages half hidden in verdure; and over all, tops of minarets and points of white domes rising halfway up the spine of a mountain which cuts off the horizon like a curtain, a great city spread over an immense garden, over a shore broken by ravines and precipices, clothed with syca- mores, and there descending into verdant plains with open spots full of flowers and shade; and the azure mirror of the Bos- phorus reflecting all their various beauty. While I stood gazing at Scutari, my friend touched me with his elbow to signify his discovery of another city. And I saw in fact, turning towards the Sea of Marmora, beyond Scu- tari on the same Asiatic shore, a long line of houses, of mosques, and of gardens, before which the ship had passed and which till now had been hidden by the fog. With the glass we could see most distinctly the cafés, bazaars, the European houses, the outer stairs, the walls surrounding gardens, and little boats scattered along the shore. It was Kadi-Kioi, “the village of the judges,” built on the ruins of ancient Chalcedon, once the 328 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY rival of Byzantium,—the Chalcedon that was founded six hun- dred and eighty-five years before Christ by the Megarians to whom the oracle at Delphi gave the name of “blind” for having made choice of that site instead of the shore opposite where Stamboul stands. “And three cities,” the Captain told us,— “count them on your fingers, for in a few moments other ones will leap forth to view.” The ship was still halted between Scutari and the Hill of the Seraglio. The fog in fact hid the Bosphorus from Scutari at that point, and all Galata and all Pera which we fronted. Sail- ing ships passed near us, steamers, caiques, and sailboats, but no one gave them a glance. All eyes were fixed on the gray curtain which shut out the Frankish city. I was in a rage of impatience and delight. A few minutes more, and the mar- velous spectacle, which would call forth an outcry from the soul. I was scarcely able to keep the glass at my eyes, so greatly did my hand tremble. The Captain watched me, help- less man, and appreciated my emotion and, rubbing his hands, exclaimed: “Yes, here we are. Here we are.” At last white spots began to appear behind the veil, then a vague outline of great height, then a scattered and vivid flash of window panes smitten by the sun, and finally Galata and Pera in full light, a mountain of many-colored houses, one above the other ; a lofty city crowned with minarets, with cupo- las, with cypresses; on the summit the monumental palaces of the different embassies, and the great Tower of Galata; at its foot the vast arsenal of Tophane and a forest of masts; and as the fog diminished, the city lengthened rapidly along the Bosphorus, and quarter after quarter came out, stretching from the tops of the hills to the edge of the sea, vast, thickly set with houses, marked white here and there by mosques; rows of ships, little gateways, palaces rising from the water, pavilions, gardens, kiosks, groves; and confused in the distant fog, other quarters showing only their highest points gilded by the sun; a glow of colors, an exuberance of verdure, a range of vistas, a grandeur, a delight, a grace to elicit the wildest exclamations. Every one upon the ship stood with lips apart, passengers, sail- ors, Turks, Europeans, children. No one uttered a sound. ILLUSTRATIONS 329 No one knew which way to look. We had on one side Scutari and Kadi-Kioi; on the other the Hill of the Seraglio; in front, Galata, Pera, the Bosphorus. To see everything, it was neces- sary to turn round upon one’s self as on a pivot; and we turned about, throwing on every side our excited glances, laughing and gesticulating without speech, with a joy that suffocated us. Heavens! what glorious moments! Nevertheless the grandest and most beautiful sight of all remained to be seen. We were still motionless outside Point Seraglio, which we must pass before in order to see the Golden Horn, and the most wonderful view of Constantinople is on the Golden Horn. ‘‘Gentlemen, attention,” called out the Cap- tain, before giving the order to advance. “‘Now comes the critical moment. In three minutes we shall face Constanti- nople !” A shiver of excitement passed over me. We waited yet a moment and another. Oh! how my heart thumped! With what feverish impatience I waited for the blessed word, “Forward!” “Forward,” cried the Captain. The ship began to move. Weare off at last! Kings, princes, Croesuses, potentates, and ye fortunate of the earth, at that moment I pitied you; my post upon the deck of our ship was worth all your treasuries, and I would not have sold one look for an empire. One minute—a second minute—Seraglio Point is before us —we catch a glimpse of an enormous space full of light and an immensity of objects and of colors—the point is passed— behold Constantinople! Matchless Constantinople, superb, sublime! Glory of creation and of man! I had not dreamed of such beauty! And now would you describe, vain wretch, profane with words of yours this divine vision? Who dares to describe Con- stantinople? Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Gautier, what have you stammered? Still images and words crowd to my mind and flee from my pen. I see, I speak, I write, all at once, with- out hope, but with a passion which intoxicates me. Then let us see. The Golden Horn directly before us like a great river ; and on either shore, two chains of heights on which rise and 330 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY extend two parallel chains of city, which embrace eight miles of hills, valleys, bays, and promontories; a hundred amphi- theatres of monuments and gardens; an immense border of houses, of mosques, of bazaars, of seraglios, of baths, of kiosks, distinguished by an endless variety of colors; in the midst of these, thousands of minarets, with shining points, rise to the sky like innumerable points of ivory; and groves of cypresses emerge and descend in dark lines from the heights to the sea, engarlanding suburbs and ports; and vigorous vegetation rising and overflowing everywhere, fringing the summits, encircling the roofs, and hanging over the water’s edge. On the right, Galata fronted by a forest of masts and flags; above Galata, Pera with the mighty outlines of her European palaces in re- lief upon the sky; in front, a bridge which connects the two shores, and crowded by two opposing throngs of many colored folk; on the left, Stamboul, stretched over her broad hills, each crowned by a gigantic mosque with leaden dome and pin- nacles of gold; Santa Sophia, white and rose-colored; Sultan Ahmed, flanked by six minarets; Soliman the Great crowned with ten domes; Sultana Validé mirrored in the waters; on the fourth hill, the mosque of Mahomet JI; on the fifth, the mosque of Selim; on the sixth, the Seraglio of Tekyr; and above the summits of all, the white tower of the Seraschiere which overlooks the shores of the two continents from the Dardanelles to the Black Sea. Beyond the sixth hill of Stam- boul and beyond Galata nothing but vague profiles can be seen, points of cities or of suburbs, ends of ports, of fleets and of groves, as it were vanishing into azure air, seeming realities no longer, but false visions of atmosphere and light. How am I to grasp the various parts of this prodigious picture? The glance is fixed, one moment, on the nearer shore, upon a Turk- ish cottage or gilded minaret; but suddenly it darts back at random into that luminous and spacious depth between those fleeing lines of fantastic cities, hardly followed by the be- wildered mind. An infinitely serene majesty is diffused over all this loveliness; a something of youthfulness and passion, which wakens a thousand memories of fairy tales and dreams of springtide, a something airy and mysterious and grand, which carries the fancy beyond things of reality. The misty ILLUSTRATIONS 331 sky, filled with finest tints of opaline and silver, forms a back- ground on which everything is shown with marvelous clearness and delicacy; the sea, sapphire-colored and dotted everywhere with crimson buoys, gives back the minarets in trembling re- flections, long and white; the domes glitter; all the immensity of vegetation waves and quivers in the morning air; clouds of doves hover about the mosques; thousands of painted and gilded caiques dart about the waters; a breeze from the Black Sea brings perfumes from ten miles of gardens; and when drunk with the glories of this paradise, and oblivious of all things else, you turn away, you see behind you, with a new sentiment of wonder, the shores of Asia shutting up the pano- rama with the pompous splendor of Scutari and the snowy summits of Olympus; the Sea of Marmora sprinkled with little islands and whitened with sails; and the Bosphorus covered with ships, winding between two interminable lines of kiosks, of palaces, and of villas, and losing itself mysteriously among the most smiling hills of all the East. Ah yes! This is the most beautiful spectacle on earth. He who denies it is un- grateful to God and does despite to his creation. A mightier beauty would overpower the senses of mankind. The first emotion past, I watched my fellow travelers. The faces of all were changed. The two Athenian ladies had moist ~ eyes; the Russian mother, in that solemn moment, was strain- ing the little Olga to her breast. Even the impassive English minister let us hear for the first time the sound of his voice, exclaiming from time to time “Wonderful! Wonderful!” The ship was moored not far from the bridge. In a few moments a crowd of boats had gathered about it, and on the deck burst a throng of Turkish, Greek, Armenian, and Jewish porters, who, cursing one another in outrageous Italian, pos- sessed themselves of our effects and of our persons. After a useless attempt at resistance, I bestowed an embrace upon the Captain, a kiss upon Olga, and an adieu on all, and descended with my friend into a four-oared caique, which con- veyed us to the custom house. From here we climbed through a labyrinth of narrow streets to the Hotel de Byzantium, on the top of the hill of Pera. IV The Magic of the Learned By Victor RYDBERG We find ourselves in a dismal labyrinth of narrow, winding streets, now and then issuing into some open space before a guild-hall or a church. The objects which meet our gaze in this strange city do not solicit pause or reflection; for we have seen essentially the same type of homes and humanity in many another city which we have wandered through in our search for the stone of wisdom. We therefore continue on our way. The buildings of the university are said to be in the neighbor- hood, and we turn the corner to the right, and again to the left, until we come upon it. The lecture-hour approaches. Profes- sors draped in stiff mantles and wearing the scholastic cap on their supremely wise foreheads, wend their way to the temples of knowledge at the portals of which flocks of students stand. We recognize their various and familiar types. The new- matriculated look as usual, their cheeks still retaining the glow of early youth, their hearts still humble, perhaps still held captive by the sweet delusion that the walls by which they wait are the propyleea to all the secrets of earth and heaven. Just as readily recognized are the parchment-worms, destined one day to shine as lights in the Church and in the domain of science, whether they now toil themselves pale and melancholic over their catena, their summa and sententia, or bear with un- feigned self-satisfaction the precious weight of terms which lifts them so conspicuously above the ignorant mass of mortals. Among the throng of the first-named still fresh with youth, and these already dried pedants, we find also the far-famed third class of students, adventurers assembled from all quar- 332 ILLUSTRATIONS $33 ters under the protection of university privileges,—those gen- tlemen with bearded cheek, and faces swelled by drinking and scarred by combat, with terribly long and broad swords dangling at their side—the heroes of that never-ending Iliad which the apprentices of learning and the guilds enact nightly in the darkness of the lanes, who may yet turn out some day the most pious of conventical priors, the gravest doctors and the very severest burgomasters in Christendom, unless before that time they meet their fate upon the gallows, or on the field of battle, or as scholares vagantes in the ditch or by the roadside. Shall we enter and listen to some of these lectures which are about to be delivered? Our letter of academic member- ship will open the door to us, if we desire. To the left in the vaulted hall the professor of medicine has commenced his lec- ture. With astonishing subtlety and penetration he discusses the highly important question, before propounded by Petrus de Abano, but not as yet fully solved,—‘“an caput sit factum propter cerebrum vel oculos” (whether the head was formed for the sake of the brain or the eyes). To the right the pro- fessor of theology leads us into one of the dim mysteries of the Church by ventilating the question what Peter would have done with the bread and wine, had he distributed the elements while the body of Christ in unchanged reality was yet hang- ing on the cross.*_ A little farther on in this mouldy vault we find the workshop of philosophy, where a master in the art of abstract reasoning deduces the distinction between universa- lia ante rem and universalia in re. In yonder furthest room a jurisconsult expounds a passage in the pandects.—Or perhaps you would rather not choose at all? You smile sadly. Alas! like myself you have good reason for complaining with Faust: I have, alas! Philosophy, Med’cine, and Jurisprudence too, And to my cost Theology, With ardent labor studied through. And here I stand, with all my lore, Poor fool, no wiser than before. 1 Yet in the days of Erasmus of Rotterdam the theologians were making great ado over this knotty problem. 334 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY And if you add like him, Hence have I now applied myself to magic, we shall bring back to our minds the object of our burning de- sires, the hope which cheers us that finally the veil will be torn from the face of the Isis-image, and that we shall behold the unspeakable face to face, even though her looks burn us to ashes. Let us turn back upon this tragi-comic seat of learn- ing, where, as everywhere else, hoary-headed fools are teach- ing young chicken-heads to admire nonsense, and young eagle- souls to despair of knowledge. It is not far hence direct—as direct as the winding lanes permit—to that great magician who has taken up his abode in this city. At the feet of that master let us seat ourselves. We shall there slake our burning thirst with at least a few drops of that knowledge which through by-gone ages has been flowing in a subterranean channel, though from the same sources as the streams of Paradise. And if we are disappointed there,—well then you, if you so choose, can quench your longing for truth in the whirlpool of pleasure and adventure. J shall go into a monastery, seek the narrowest of its cells, watch, pray, scourge forth my blood in streams; or I shall go to India, sit down upon the ground and stare at the tip of my nose,—stare at it and never cease, year out and year in, until all consciousness is extinguished. Agreed, then, is it not? We are arrived in the very loneliest quarter of the town, and the most dreary limits of the quarter, where old crumbling houses group themselves in inextricable confusion along the city wall, and from their gable windows fix their vacant, hypo- chondriacal looks upon the open fields beyond. A tower, crowning the wall of the fort upon this side, now serves the great scientist as an observatory and dwelling, given him by the burgomaster and the council of the city. He was fora long time private physician to the Queen of France, but has now retired to this lonely place from the pleasures, the distinc- tions, and the dangers of life at court, in order to devote him- self quietly to research and study. He has a protector in the ILLUSTRATIONS 1). $385 prince-archbishop resident in the city; and as the professor of theology has certified at the request of this same prince- bishop to his strict orthodoxy, the city authorities thought to persuade him to receive the honorable and lucrative position of town-astrologer, not heeding the assertion of the monks that he was a wizard, and that his black spaniel was in reality none other than the devil himself. A magician never suffers himself to be interrupted in his labors, whether engaged in contemplating the nature of spirits, in watching the heavens, or in the elaboration of the quinta essentia, the final essence, with his crucibles. Oh! what world- wide hopes, what solemn emotions, what inexpressible tension of soul must accompany these investigations! Gold, which tules the world, here falls from the tree of knowledge as a fruit overripe into the bosom of the master. And what is gold with all the power it possesses, and all the enjoyment it commands, compared with the ability to control heaven and earth and the spirits of hell, compared with the capacity to summon by the means of lustrations, seals, characters and exorcisms the angels hovering in the higher spheres, or tame to obedience the demons which fill the immensity of space? And what again is this power compared with the pure celestial knowledge to which magic delivers the key,—a knowledge as much transcending the wisdom of angels as the son’s place in his father’s house is superior to a servant’s? Perchance the magician at this very moment is deeply absorbed in some investigation, and within a hair’s breadth of the revelation of some new and dazzling truth. Let us consider before we venture to ask admittance. Let us pause a moment before this iron-bound door, and recover our breath. We knocked upon the door ponderous with its bolts of iron. It opened as by an unseen hand. No servant interposed either welcome or remonstrance as we mounted the dark spiral stairs. Unannounced we entered the hall of the great magician. Along the arched ceiling of the rooms, whose green lead-fastened win- dow panes admitted but a scanty light, floated a fragrant vapor from the cell in the extreme background, where we could see the magician himself clad in a snow-white mantle reaching to his feet, and standing solemnly beside an incense-altar. Upon 3886 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY his head he wore a diadem, on which was engraved the un- speakable name, Tetragrammaton, and in his hand he held a metallic plate which, as we soon learned, was made of electrum and signed with the signatures of coming centuries. We paused and stammered a word of excuse for the inter- ruption we had caused him. A smile of satisfaction broke upon his face when he had momentarily surveyed us, and he bade us welcome. “You are the very persons whose arrival I have been ex- pecting, and whom it has cost me much trouble to summon,” he said. ‘You are the spirits of the nineteenth century, con- jured to appear before a man of the fifteenth. You are called from the antechambers where the souls of the unborn await their entrance upon earth. But the images of the century to which your future mortal life belongs dwell in the depths of your consciousness. These images you shall show me. For this have I summoned you, to gain a glance into the future.” I was seized with a strange, almost horrid feeling. I now remembered that I and my companions had transported our- selves, by the use of means which stirs up the entire reproduc- tive forces of the imagination, from the actual nineteenth cen- tury, back to the long-past fifteenth, that we might see it live before our eyes, not in dissevered traits as a past age is wont to be preserved in books, but in the completeness of its own multiformity. Who was right, the magician or myself? Which was the one only seemingly living, he or 1? At what hour did the hand on the clock of time point at that moment? Granted that time is absolutely nothing but a conceptual form without independent reality ; as long as I live in time I believe in its ordered course, and do not wish to see its golden thread entangled. I did not wish that the spirit which I had sum- moned should be my master and degrade me to a product of his own imagination. I summoned courage and exclaimed: “We have wandered through many cities, great magician, to find you. We finally stand in this your sanctuary. We see these gloomy Gothic arches over our heads. We see your venerable figure before us. We behold these folios and strange instruments which surround you. We look out through these windows and behold on one side towers and housetops, on the ILLUSTRATIONS 837 other fields, meadows and the huts of serfs, and yonder in the distance the castle of a knight who is suspected of night- attacks upon the trains of the merchants as they approach the city. All these things stand real and present before our eyes. But, nevertheless, great magician, it is all, yourself included, a product of our magic, of the power of our own imagination, not of your magic. It is in order to make some acquaintance with the latter that we are come. It is not we who are to answer your questions, but you ours.” The magician smiled. He persisted in his view, and I in mine. The contested question could not be decided, and it was laid aside. But along with my consciousness of belonging to a period of critical activity, my doubts had awakened—my vivid hope a moment ago of finding in magic the key of all secrets, was fast fading away. I looked around in this home of the magician. On his writ- ing-desk lay a parchment on which he had commenced to write down the horoscope of the following year. Beside the desk was a celestial globe with figures painted in various colors. In a window looking towards the south hung an astrolabe, to whose alidade a tong telescope (of course without lenses) was at- tached. The bookcase contained a not inconsiderable number of folios: Versio Vulgata, some volumes of the fathers, Virgil, Dionysius Areopagites, Ptolemy, the Hymns of Orpheus, Hermes Trismegistus, Jamblichus, Pliny’s Natural History, a large number of works partly in Arabic upon astrology and alchemy, also a few Hebrew manuscripts, and so on. These and other such things were to be found in his observatory, which was also his studio and sleeping-room. Next to the con- servatory was the alchemical laboratory with a strangely ap- pointed oven filled with singular instruments reminding me again of Faust’s complaint : Ihr Instrumente freilich spottet mein, Mit Rad und Kamen, Walz und Biugel. Ich stand am Thor, ihr solltet Schlussel sein; Zwar euer Bart ist kraus, doch hebt Ihr nicht der Riegel. While we lingered here our host informed us that for the present he had suspended his experiments in alchemy. He 8388 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY hoped to find his quinta essentia by a shorter process than the © combination of substances and distillation, which had exhausted already so many investigators and led so few to success. He acknowledged that he had himself advanced no farther in the art of the adepts than the extraction from “philosophic earth” mixed with ‘“‘philosophic water’ of just so much, and no more, gold than he had employed at the beginning of the experiment. In spite of this, however, he worked daily before his oven, melting and purifying such metals as he needed for his planet- medallions, amulets and magical rings, and above all in pre- paring that effective alloy which is called electrum. From his laboratory our host conducted us into two other apartments with arched ceilings, forming a sort of museum of most extraordinary curiosities,—skeletons and dried limbs of various animals; fishes, birds, lizards, frogs, snakes, etc.; herbs and differently colored stones; whole and broken swords; nails extracted from coffins and gallows; flasks containing I know not what,—all arranged in groups under the signs of the dif- ferent planets. We beheld before us the wonderful and rich apparatus of practical magic arranged according to rules of which we were entirely ignorant,—rules which we had vainly sought in all the treatises of modern times upon the occult sciences of the Middle Ages, rules which might perhaps contain the simple principles underlying their confusion. Evening was drawing on. The sun was sinking behind the western hills. It was beginning to grow dark among the arches where the great magician had imprisoned himself among dead and withered relics,—fragments broken from the great and living world without. We returned to his observatory. He opened a window and contemplated with dreamy glances the stars which were kindling one after another in the heavens. The twilight is a favorable time for conversation of the kind for which we had been preparing ourselves. We were soon settled in comfortable, roomy armchairs and discoursing ear- nestly,—we, the man of the fifteenth century, and the unborn souls of the nineteenth, whom he had summoned that he might look into the future, and who now used him to look back into the past. He spoke to us of his science. . . “My knowledge is not of myself. Far, far away behind these ILLUSTRATIONS 339 hills, behind the snowy summits of the Alps, behind the moun- tains of the ‘farthest-dwelling Garamantes,’ on nameless heights which disappear among the clouds, the temple of truth was built long ago over the fountain from which life flows. That this temple is demolished we well know; only the first human pair has wandered through its sacred halls... . All wisdom has its roots in the past, and the farther we penetrate antiquity, the richer the remains we find of a highest human wisdom. What is Albertus Magnus with his profound knowl- edge in comparison with the angelic wisdom of Dionysius Areo- pagites, and what is the latter compared with that of the prophet who denounced his woes over Nineveh and Babylon? And yet these divinely commissioned men would gladly have been taught by the seventy elders who were allowed with Moses to approach the mountain where God chose to reveal himself, there receiving the mystic knowledge of the Cabala. On Sinai, however, God’s secret was veiled in clouds, lightnings and terror; Moses himself was permitted to see him only ‘from behind, —did not obtain a morning-knowledge (a knowledge a priori, an analogy-seeking pupil of Schelling would have called it), but an evening-knowledge (knowledge a posteriori, he would have added). The morning-knowledge was shown only to the man of the dawn of time and was extinguished at the first sin. From that time every successive generation has deteriorated from its predecessor: Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores, mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem, and with the darkness of sin reason is plunged into constantly blacker depths. The individual seeker after truth may gain enlightenment, but for himself alone, not for humanity. There- fore a magician confines the wisdom he acquires to his own bosom, or imparts it to a single pupil, or buries it under ob- scure expressions which he commits to parchment. But he neither can nor will impart it without reserve to humanity whose path appears to lead downward into a constantly deeper night. 3840 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY “Even the theologians speak of the pristine wisdom,—the theologians with whom we, who practice the occult science, agree far more than the simple and suspicious among them think. What remained, in the time of Noah, of pristine wis- dom was saved with him in the ark. His first-born obtained as his portion the fairest wisdom. Prophecy, the Cabala, and the Gospel belong to the sons of Shem, the Jews. But even Ham and Japhet were not left destitute. It was the priest of the sons of Ham that guarded the secrets of Isis,—secrets be- fore which even we Christians must bow in the dust; for the Old Testament does not hesitate to exalt the wisdom of the Egyptians and recognize Moses as a pupil from their school. Hermes Trismegistus was an Egyptian, and we magicians who know that he transmuted whatever he chose into gold and precious stones, are not astonished when the apostle Paul - speaks of the treasures of Egypt, or at what travellers relate of its pyramids and other giant works, or when Pliny esti- mates the number of its cities at twenty thousand, or when Marcellinus is amazed at the immense treasures which Cam- byses carried away from it, for all this was a creation of the art of Hermes Trismegistus. Even the portion of the children of Japhet was not insignificant. It was divided between the treasury of Zoroaster and that of the Eleusinian mysteries. Some coins of this treasure fell into the hands of Plato and Aristotle and have from them come into the possession of Porphyrius, Jamblichus, and the theosophists and scholastics, It is this diffused illumination—that of the Bible (its inner, secret meaning) the Cabala and fragments of Egyptian, Per- sian and Grecian wisdom—which are collected and united in the magic of learning. These are the ancestors of my science. Has it not a pedigree more noble than that of any royal family? “T heard you mention something about the necessity for a science of investigation without presupposition. Would you then really presume to be the judge of all that past generations have thought, believed and transmitted as a sacred inheritance to those that follow? Do you not shrink before the idea that human hunger for truth must have been satisfied from Adam to our own days by nothing but illusions, that you are the ILLUSTRATIONS 341 children and children’s children of mere idiots who have fixed their hopes, their faith, and their convictions on baseless false- hoods? Put your godless plan of investigation to the test! Do it openly, and the theologians will burn you! Do it in secret, and you will finally crave the stake as a liberator from the ter- rible void such a science would leave in your own soul! No, the magician believes just as devoutly as the theologian. Only in the mellow twilight of faith can he undertake those opera- tions whose success is a confirmation of the truth of his faith. Or do you require stronger corroboration of the genuineness of his tenets than what I find when I read in these stars which wander silently past my window, the fates of men, and see these fates accomplished; when, with the potency of magical means, I summon angels, and demons, and the souls of dead and unborn men to reveal themselves before my eyes, and they appear ? “T confess that our science, if it is looked at only on the surface, resembles a variegated carpet with artfully interwoven threads. But as only a limited number of manipulations is re- quired to produce the most remarkable texture, so it is also but a few simple thoughts which support all the doctrines and products of magic. “That the universe is a triple harmony, as the Godhead is a Trinity, you are aware. We live in the elemental world; over our head the celestial space, with its various spheres, revolves; and above this, finally, God is enthroned in the purely spiritual world of ideas. The unhappy scientists of your century have in their narrow prejudice separated these worlds from one another (but by crowding together the celestial and the ele- mentary). Your so-called students of nature investigate only the elementary world, and your so-called philosophers only the ideal. But the former, with all their delving in the various forms of matter, never reach the realm of the spiritual, but are rather led to disavow its existence; and the latter can never from the dim world of ideas summon up the concrete wealth of nature. In vain your students of nature imagine that in physi- ology, or your philosophers that in anthropology, they shall find the transition from one world to the other. We magicians, on the contrary, study these worlds as a unit. We find them com- 842 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY bined by two mighty bonds: those of correspondence and causality. All things in the elementary world have their anti- type in the celestial, and all celestial things have their corre- sponding ideas. These correspondences are strung from above downwards as strings on the harp of the universe, and on that harp the causalities move up and down like the fingers of a player. While your students of nature seek the chains of causality in only one direction, the horizontal, that which runs through things on the same level, that which connects things in one and the same elementary world, we, the students of magic, search with still greater diligence those perpendicular chains of causality which run through and combine corresponding objects in the three worlds. Our manner of investigating this per- pendicular series resembles your method of examining the horizontal but slightly, if at all. What unnecessary trouble your induction causes you! You wish to investigate the nature of some manifestation of force, for instance. You analyze it with great painstaking into different factors, you strive to iso- late each of these factors and to cause them to act each its own part, to find out what each has contributed to the common ex- pression of force. We meet with no such hindrances. A se- cret tradition has presented to us our perpendicular lines of causality almost entire, and we are able to fill up the lacunz of this tradition by an investigation which is not impeded with any great difficulties. This investigation relies on the re- semblances of things, for this similarity is derived from a cor-. respondence, and causality is interwoven with correspondence. Thus, for instance, we judge from the resemblance between the splendor of gold and that of the sun that gold has its celestial correspondence in that luminary, and sustains to it a causal relation. Another example: the two-horned beetle bears a causal relation to the moon, which at its increase and wane is also two-horned; and if there were any doubt of this inti- mate relation between them, it must vanish when we learn that the beetle hides its eggs in the earth for the space of twenty-eight days, or just so long time as is required for the moon to pass through the Zodiac, but digs them up again on the twenty-ninth, when the moon is in conjunction with the Sun. Do not smile at this method of investigation! Beware ILLUSTRATIONS 343 of repeating the mistakes which ‘common sense’ is so prone to make in seeing absurdities in truths which happen to be beyond its horizon? Our method is founded on the idea that there is nothing casual in nature. To be sure we accept a divine ar- bitrament, but by no means a natural fortuity. Not even the slightest similarity between existing objects is a meaningless accident! Not even the slightest stroke in the figures by which we fix our words and thoughts in writing is without deep significance. Everything in the work of nature and of man has its cause and its effect. We can not make a gesture, nor say a word, without imparting vibrations to the whole uni- verse, upward and downward,—vibrations which may be strong or feeble, perceptible or imperceptible. This principle runs through the whole of our cosmical system, and this thought must be true even for you analyzers. “Before explaining more fully the magical use of our series of correspondence and causality, I wish to show you a couple of them. I shall choose the simplest, but at the same time the most important. I commence with “Here you see one of the nets which magic has stretched from the Empyrean down into the abyss. For each of the sacred numbers there is a separate scale of the same kind: ‘The universe, says Pythagoras, ‘is founded upon numbers,’ and Boethius asserts that “everything created in the beginning of time was formed according to the relations of certain num- bers, which were lying as types in the mind of the Creator.’ It is consequently a settled fact with us that numbers contain greater and more effective forces than material things; for the former are not a mixture of substances, but may, as purely formal entities, stand in immediate connection with the ideas of divine reason. This is recognized also by the fathers: by Hieronymus, Augustine, Ambrosius, Athanasius, Bede, and others, and underlies these words in the book of Revelation: ‘Let him who hath understanding count the number of the beast.’ Those varied and relatively discordant objects which form a unity in the same world, are arranged side by side in the scale; whereas those things which in different groups or different worlds correspond to one another, form the ascending and descending series. *syUSTaTa [etyseyeso «38y} JO saryyenb sinoy *‘SJUSWII[9 94} 0} pezejat se sjyourjd pute siejs oy “OCIPOZ 24} JO SdI}OI[dII} INOJ sq T *s}UdUIZ|9 24} J9AO0 BuIpisaid sjosuy ‘sjurod pied inoy 24} jO suviprens ‘sjazue ino ‘AYOICIIIY [eI}SITIO 94} JO Sorzyorjdi33 Inoy 34] *sI9}}9. INO; ur (qeAoyaf) oweu spony ‘S}USUETY INOY 24} 0} saouspuodsarz0> 924} Puno} st yor *SSOUULIIT ‘uoo| ‘sI®JS paxly *erdey ‘OBIT A ‘snine [, "PHY ‘PHN "stOssajuo7y ‘SIAJIVIY ‘SJUIES *APIAIZOY *AINIII YL ‘uInyes "So0SIg ‘ordi09g ‘roouey *sIsIey erge!) ‘sjosuy ‘sjasueyory ‘sory “Wyedrourig ‘Aouad -ledsueiy ‘snus A ‘sayidnf ‘snizenby ‘e1qrT ‘rUTUIds) ‘qniayqD ‘jaeydey ‘sorrduy ‘sIgMOg ‘suOTUIWIOG GVuaLal ATIOH AHL dO HIVOS AHL ‘WSrT ‘ans ‘sie *“SNIICIIBES ‘oa ‘sory *ydeiasg "PeqIM *squory fT, “ulrqnia4) ‘miydesas woly "P1404 10148218 a4 ‘SSUg pun Ssagkjayosp jo P14OM P4L *sjurod [eurpieo Inojy ey} J2AO Burpisoid suoup oyy ‘SJUDUIITS 9Y} UI Burger sjsids [1Aa ay} Jo sooulsg *sjusuIeIaduis JT, “Bulspnf jo sajdiourd imog *S}UDUIIO 24} 0} Surpuodssii0od sau0js *s}usur ~2[9 94} 0} Surpuodsaii0s sjezoP *SJUDUIZI[A 394} 0} poqry] “92 se sjurjd oy} jo sjred oyy ‘s[ewrue Jo spury Ino *soIpoq pax Jo spury Ino.T ‘syurod pivo Inojy ayy *‘suOSB9S INO} oy T *s]uot -2J> 24} Jo soryyenb snoz ayy, ‘sjusWa]2 INOJ sy] ‘uoulreUly "pezeyoyy ‘oITOyourpapy ‘20uUsTIOdx “onbedg pue Adavozy “IIATIS ‘peo JOON *SUITMEID) *sou0ysg "YNOS ‘uuInyny “AUPITY yyeg ‘uASy "[aezy ‘O1JeWUIsI[Y J ‘noruldg ‘PIE pue 1e9]9 “IOATISYIING *SOABOT “SUIWIUIMS "STeIDIN ‘UION “IOUT, *ssoupoy “TOTEM, ‘uowAeg ‘ppezezy “OTUINSUBS *QDUIIOS ‘yusredsues yz pue 3481] SEL. ‘taddoy *“IIMOPT “SUIAT *sqioyy "4S9\\ “sulids ‘Aupram y “aI *SUSTIO ‘jaeules ‘O1I9[045) Wuey “‘SsulUINgG pue sururys "uOIT ‘PIOD *ULIO4) “SUTATeM ‘s[eUIUYy ‘yseq ‘JowuNsS "TUIIE ‘Oat 11?H "SOUSOD ~O4D1 P1404 Kappuamal zy sig (9 346 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY “Do not forget that correspondence also implies reciprocal activity! Thus, for instance, the letter ;(/) in the holy name of God indicates a power which is infused into the successive orders of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, and which is im- parted through them to the constellations Leo and Sagittarius, and to the two wandering luminaries, Mars and the Sun. These angels and stars all pour down into the elementary world the abundance of their power, which produces there fire and heat, and the germs of animal organisms, and kindles in man reason and faith, in order to meet finally in the lowest region, its oppo- sites: cold, destruction, irrationality, unbelief, represented by the names of fallen angel-princes. I will now show you another table which is an introduction to the study of Astrology and treats more in detail of certain parts of the preceding, showing how things in the elementary world and microcosm are sub- ject to the planets. In showing this to you I will remind you of the verse: “The value of these, as of many other tables, will be clear to you when I now pronounce the first practical principle of magic: “As the Creator of the universe diffuses upon us, by angels, stars, elements, animals, plants, metals and stones, the powers of his omnipotence, so also the magician, by collecting those objects in the elemental world which bear a relation of mutual activity to the same entity (an angel or a planet) in the higher worlds, and by combining their powers according to scientific rules, and intensifying them by means of sacred and religious ceremonies, 1s able to influence this higher being and attract to himself its powers. “This principle sufficiently explains why I have collected around me all the strange things you here see. Here, for in- stance, is a plate of lead on which is engraved the symbol of a planet ; and beside it a leaden flask containing gall. If I now take a piece of fine onyx marked with the same planet-symbol, and this dried cypress-branch, and add to them the skin of a snake and the feather of an owl, you will need but to look into one of the tables given you to find that I have only collected various things in the elementary world which bear a relation of mutual activity to Saturn; and, if rightly combined, can at- *s£e]O uMOIq [Ie pue xAsuo “Peery ‘I0pO [No} Jo Awoo[s e jo soy} pue ssoidéy ‘Jeuinzoou pue surpmeiy ATES "IOJE AA ‘Yueq UANIDS “pe10[0d-118 pue user "ULL “RAES “PIOD "039 ‘s[earay ‘rejdog ‘W999q “FeO ‘o[jUas pue SNLOLIE SEG ‘soon dAT}C}ISI A ALY 4ajign yt ‘Pusey ysAyjoUrYy ‘radse { ‘puowriq “sTejoul d1inyd[ns pue uo] ‘SuUISUI]S pue ‘shouostod ‘SuluIng *£a1d jo sjsvog "soon [ PRY: ‘Oat SAD eyo) ‘gpounqies) ‘Aqny ‘zedoy “PIOD *049 ‘snjoT ‘odo13 “O19H{ ‘OUT A ‘Jeiney ‘auig *snooseinod pue plog ‘IgMod [e}A pue poolg ‘Oat uns “O79 ‘TThzeqT ‘ueljouiey) “IOATIS *sd9J}-JinIy pue sooids *yOUT;SUI penxes suoljs YM {iit ee ‘soon AWTS "IO}e MA ‘II snua 4 *perojoo Aue "qinustg ULL ‘JIATISHOING SIMMOY posto -joo Auew pue saaeo] Woys 911317 ‘pider pue suruuny ‘soon PoXtIN Ioze MM CANIAI JT (‘ssvjs 94} sopmn3 poy ynq {ueu opin$ ssejs oy T) ‘shod P4j}se sal pas ‘woulwoy jJunsel eyusy *sjreod pue sou0js pik: Coase | Af “JOATIS ‘039 ‘AIBWISOY ‘dosssyY] ‘mye adosjousas ‘aqe -asueys pue a1qeI0S *sooIn{ onuM *"19ye MA ‘yqyseg uoojy *S2U0}S *s[e12° 7 "surg *s[eMIUYy "SOULSODOIOTPAT *‘s]UDWIO[Y 848 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY tract both the powers of that planet, and of the angels with which it is connected. “The greatest effect of magic—at the same time its triumph, and the criterion of its truth—is a successful incantation. Shall we perform one? If we go through all the necessary preparations, we shall have a bird’s-eye view of the whole secret science. Only certain alchemists have a still greater end in view; they aspire to produce in the retort man himself,— nay, the whole world. You men of the nineteenth century know only by reputation of our attempts to produce an ho- munculus, and a perpetuum mobile nature. Could you only count the drops of perspiration these efforts have wrung from us! There is something enchanting, something overpowering, in alchemy. It is gigantic in its aims, and in its depths dwells a thought which is terrible, because it threatens to crush that very cosmic philosophy on which our faith is founded. We occupy ourselves with the elements, until the idea steals upon us that everything is dependent on them; that everything, Creator and created, is included in them; that everything arises by necessity and passes away by necessity. If you can only collect in the crucible those elements and life-germs which were stirring in chaos, then you can also produce, in the crucible, the six days of creation, and find the spirit which formed the universe. I have abandoned alchemy only to escape this thought ; but a parchment will, sealed with seven seals and hid- den in the most secret corners of my vaults, contains the remarkable experiences I have had when experimenting for the perpetuum mobile and homunculus. “But to the preparations for our conjuration! First we are met with the question, Is the hour favorable? Do the aspects oppose? Aspect is the relative position of two planets to each other. Every calendar from the centuries which lie between’ you and me speaks of these aspects: of the conjunction of the planets (when they are on the same meridian, and consequently separated by no angular distance) ; their opposition (when in a directly opposite part of the heavens) ; their quadrature (dis- tance of 90°), trigon (120°), and hexagon (60°). If the blood- red Mars, or the pale Saturn stand in quadrature or in oppo- sition to one another, or to any of the other wandering stars, ILLUSTRATIONS 349 this portends destruction. But to-day both these planets are harmless. The aspects are good, and Mars itself, being in the first ‘face’ of its own house,’ is consequently even kindly dis- posed. Even the moon, whose assistance is needed, is in the house of a friendly star, and in a favorable quadrature to Jupiter. Here we meet consequently with no hindrances. It remains, however, on the side of Astrology to find out what planets are the regents of the present year. In other words, what planets form the first aspect of the year. Look here in my calendarium. Mars was one of them. This suits us all the better as to-day is Tuesday, Mars’ own day, and as the hour will soon be here which, on this day, he presides over absolutely. It is therefore of importance that we use in our incantation the martial part of my magical apparatus. Among the elements fire is martial. We shall therefore kindle a fire upon this altar. Among the planets, the thorny, poisonous and nettlelike are martial. We shall therefore feed this fire with dry twigs and rosebushes. Among the animals the ferocious and bold are connected with the blood-red star. Here you see three belts of lion’s hide fringed with the teeth of tigers, leop- ards and bears, and provided with clasps of iron, because iron is the martial metal. Let us fasten those belts, when the time has arrived, about our waists. Among the stones the diamond, amethyst, jasper and magnet are martial. I show you here three diadems which, though of pure iron, sparkle with these stones, and are furnished with the signs and signatures of our planet. Here you have three iron staves marked with the same signs. We must bear them in our hands. These breast-plates studded with amethysts, whose Hebrew inscrip- tions and characters refer to the same stars, we must wear over our hearts on the outside of the white clothing which we shall put on before our incantation begins. Here again you will notice three diamond rings. We shall wear them on our 1 Every planet had among the twelve signs of the Zodiac its own house, and it was especially propitious when in any of those abodes. The following table shows the order: Saturn dwells in Capricornus. my Jupiter # ‘* Pisces and Sagittarius. ars * “* Aries and Scorpio. The Sun “¢ “Leo. Venus a “ Taurus and Ursa Major. Mercurius oe “* Virgo and Gemini. The Moon ee <* Cancer. 850 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY middle fingers during the solemn and awful moment for which we are preparing. These two bells we place on the table. One of a reddish alloy and furnished with iron rings, summons the martial spirit hither, the other made of electrum magicum (i.e., a proportional alloy of all metals with some astral tinc- ture added), serves to call celestial reserve-forces of all kinds, if needed. Further, we require these breast-plates and these rings of electrum, which do not bear the name of any planet, but the glorious and blessed name of God himself, as a pro- tection for the conjurers against the conjured spirit. Who he is we shall soon find. Observe here, further, a terrible arsenal which is also necessary for our purpose. Mars is the star of war, murder and passion. The demons of Mars have a corresponding nature, and there exists between them and the tools by which their work on earth is accomplished a power of attraction. Therefore we have here this heavy sword with which the magic circle is to be drawn. We therefore place in rows these skulls and bones which have been collected in places of execution, these nails, extracted from gallows, these dag- gers, knives and axes rusty with stains of blood. We must not forget the incense which was kindled on the altar shortly before the first citation. There is a different kind of incense for every planet and its demons. That appropriate for Mars is composed of euphorbia, bdellium, ammoniac, magnet, sulphur, brains of a raven, human blood and the blood of a black cat. It is highly important that the quality of this incense should be genuine. I might quote what Porphyrius says upon this point, but confine myself to pointing out that it has an influence on the conjurer as well as upon surrounding objects. It saturates both the air, and the breast of the conjurer, with substances that are connected with the planet and its demons. It draws down the conjured being and intoxicates him, as it were, with divine influences, which act on his mind and imagination. As a mat- ter of course we must prepare besides, such implements as are needed in every incantation without bearing any relation to any certain planet. To them belong amulets inscribed with the names of seraphs, cherubs and thrones, and with sentences from the Bible and the sacred books of Zoroaster. To them belong further the magical candlestick of electrum with seven ILLUSTRATIONS 351 branches, every branch bearing the sign of a planet; and above all the pentagrams, those figures with fine points which no demon can overstep. We shall place the latter as a line of fortification around the magic circle, and we must be sure that no one of the points is broken. Inside the circle between the table, the seven-armed candlestick and the incense-altar there is room for the tripod with the bowl of holy water and the sprinkler. “Having thus made the necessary preparations for our feast, let us think of the guest who is to be invited. “The air of the evening is cool. I close the window, move my study lamp to this table, and ask you to be seated around it. We must consult concerning the invitation, in which we must follow the directions given in this cabalistic manu- script. “You have found from the table I first showed you that it is the orders of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones which are related by a reciprocal activity to Mars. But these three orders constitute the highest celestial hierarchy, which remain con- stantly in the presence of God and must not be summoned hither even if we were able to do so. We may only implore their assistance. The orders of Dominions, Powers and Em- pires are the only intelligences connected with the stars. Among them we must address ourselves to the spirits of Mars, since Mars is the regent of this year, this day and of the intended incantation. The choice between the good and the evil spirits ruled by Mars is still open; but since it is not our purpose to invoke by supplication, but to compel by conjura- tion, we must choose the wicked. This is no sin, it is only danger. It gives joy to the good angels to see the power of God’s image over their adversaries. But we cannot force the whole host of Mars’ demons to appear in our circle. We must select one only among their legion, and this one must be well chosen. It is therefore necessary to know his name, for with spirits, far more than men and terrestrial things, the name implies the essence and the qualities of the named. The Cabala teaches us the infinite significance of words and names. It proclaims and demonstrates the mysteries which dwell in all the holy names of God. It reveals to us the mysteries in the 352 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY appellations of angels. It shows us that even the names of men are intimately related to the place in creation and the temporal destiny of those who bear them. Even names of material things show, though less distinctly, a connection be- tween the sound and the thing itself or its nature. Who can hear, for instance, the words wind, or swing, without perceiv- ing in the very sound something airy or oscillating? Who can hear stand, and strong, without perception of something stable and firm? “Let us hasten to find the name of the demon who is to be summoned. Astrology as well as the Cabala give various methods for this purpose. Let us choose the simplest, which is perhaps also the most efficient. “T must commence our work by pointing out the significance of number 72. To this number correspond the seventy-two languages, the seventy-two elders of the synagogue, the seventy- two interpreters of the Old Testament and the seventy-two disciples of our Lord. This number is also closely connected with the sacred number twelve. If the twelve signs of the Zodiac are divided into six parts, we obtain the seventy-two so-called celestial quinaries, into which the seventy-two mystical names of God, his “‘schemhamphoras,’ infuse their power and which are each of them presided over by an angel-prince. The same number also corresponds to the joints of the human frame; and there are many other correspondences. “Well, while the Cabalists were searching out the sacred inner meaning of the Bible, while they proceeded slowly, starting with the ‘In the beginning,’ and stopping at every word, every letter, and found in every word and every letter a mine of secrets, they finally, after the lapse of centuries, came as far as to the 19th verse in the 14th chapter of Exodus, commencing: ‘And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel arose.’ The cabalistical rule bk east wherever, in the Bible, an angel is spoken of, there is also the name of an angel hidden among the Hebrew letters of the verse, admonished them to pause and consider. They had at first no idea of the extraordinary discovery they were now on the point of making. But their attention was attracted by the fact that there were seventy-two letters in the verse (in the Hebrew text). Still more sur- ILLUSTRATIONS 353 prised were they when they found that even the following verse, the 2oth, contained exactly seventy-two letters; and then sur- prise grew into awe when even the 21st verse showed the same number. In the Bible there is no fortuity. A great secret was hidden here. Finally, by placing the three verses, letter by letter (the middle verse written from left to right, the others conversely), above one another, God’s seventy-two mys- tical names ‘schemhamphoras’ each consisting of three letters, from the three verses, was discovered. These names, provided with the suffix el or jah, are also the names of the seventy-two quinary angels, of which God has said that his name is in them. “Here in this cabalistic manuscript these names are pre- served. Let us select one of them at random. My eye happens to fall upon Mizrael first. We will take that. This high name of an angel which we may not invoke, will give us the key to the name of the demon which is to appear presently. Here is the table that will help us. The three root-consonants of the word Mizra (el) correspond to three others in the planet Mars, which contain the name—let us pronounce it silently, let us merely whisper it, for it is the name of the desired demon— Tekfael ! “The sum of the numerical value of the letters in this name is 488. A remarkable number, every figure reminding us of the mystical four, of the elements and of their corresponden- ces! We shall commune with one of the mightiest and most terrible among the demons. On the waxen tablet with an iron frame, I now inscribe the name of the demon, adding the num- ber 488, and these peculiar strokes which make up his signature. Time does not allow me to tell you now the rules by which the signature is formed from the name. “The preparations are now completed. It only remains to order the apparatus, and to array ourselves. When we have put our implements in order, consecrated the room, cleansed ourselves by a bath, put on the white robe, wrapped a red mantle around (for red is the color of Mars), buckled the girdle of Mars about our waists, assumed the diadem, the breastplates and the rings, I kindle on the altar my magical light, and the fire for incense, and draw the magical circle. 354 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY Then an intense prayer for the protection of God, then the in- cantation. “Here is the conjuration-book, the so-called Conjurer of Hell. I open at the page on which the martial incantations begin. The book is placed within the circle. When needed, I grasp it with the left hand. I hold the staff with my Tighe ie The Gothic room in which the incantation was to take place, presented a strange and at the same time solemn and awful aspect. The magician had arranged with practiced hand the things before mentioned. The skulls, the bones of men and beasts, the murderous weapons and the martial essence-flasks, the various and indescribable fragments from all the kingdoms of nature formed, nearest to the walls, different figures, tri- angles, squares and pentagons. Red drapery was hung over the naked walls. In the midst of the room and inside the circularly arranged pentagram were the fire and incense-altar with holy water. On a table in the rear, but partly within the circle, the magical lights were burning, and diffused an un- certain whitish-yellow light over the objects. Near the candle- stick were the two bells. We were arrayed in our garments. The face of my companion was pale as death: probably mine also. “Courage, fortitude! . . . or you are lost!’’ whispered the magician, whose eye beamed with a dark, solemn determination, and whose every feature expressed at this moment a terrible resolution. These were his last words before the incantation. We were allowed to answer nothing. I tried to be courageous, but my soul was shaken by a dreadful expectation. The prayer and religious ceremonies which we had performed after the bath and change of dress, had not diminished but only intensified this feeling. The night wind shook the windows hidden behind the heavy draperies. It seemed as if ghosts from another world had been lurking behind the gently waving curtains. Even the skulls appeared to me to bode from their sunken, vacant eyes, the arrival of something appalling. One of them attracted my attention for a long time, or rather exercised on ILLUSTRATIONS 355 me the same influence which the eye of the rattlesnake is said to have upon the bird which he approaches to devour. I no- ticed in the eye a metallic lustre. It was the gleam of the light reflected from a martial stone fastened in the skull. In the meantime the magician had seized the blood-stained sword and drew, murmuring a prayer the while, a threefold magical circle around the pentagram. Between the circumfer- ences he wrote the names of the angels of the year, the sea- son, the day and the hour. Towards the east he made the sign of Alpha, towards the west of Omega. Then he divided the circle by a cross into four fields. He assigned two of them, those behind him, to me and my companions. They were large enough to kneel upon. We were strictly enjoined not to leave them, not to allow even a fold of our mantles to wave outside the circle. Forgetfulness in this respect would cost us our lives. The magician put aside his sword in a triangle outside of the circle. He sprinkled himself and us with holy water, read formularies over the incense and the thorn twigs, and kindled them. This was the sign for us to give ourselves to prayer. We must not cease praying until we had heard the first word of the incantation. The incense spread, as it were, a dim transparent veil over the room. Here and there it was condensed into strange figures. Now human, now fantastic animal shapes arose against the vaulted wall and sank again. There must have been something narcotical in those vapory clouds. I looked at them in a half-dreaming state while my lips repeated inaudibly the enjoined prayers. I was aroused from this condition by the first word of the incantation, which struck my soul like a thunderbolt, and awakened me to full consciousness of my position and of the significance of the hour. The blood in my veins seemed changed to ice. The magician stood before me, tall, erect and commanding. He had taken the incantation-book, and now read from it with a hollow voice the first citation, which begins with a long for- mulary invoking the different mystical names of God. I cannot repeat the quotation. The highest and the lowest, the divine and the infernal, that for whose sacredness we feel an irrepressible reverence, and that for whose impiety we ex- 3856 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY perience the deepest horror, were united here in the most sol- emn and the most terrible words that human tongue has ever stammered. Now first I began to form an idea of the power of words. The name of the demon was not yet uttered. The nearer the moment for its pronunciation approached, the deeper be- came the voice of the magician. Now came the formula of invocation, and now—resounded the name TEKFAEL! It appeared as if a thousand-fold but whispering echo from the vault above, from the corners of the room, from all the skulls and from the very incantation-book itself, repeated that name. The magician became silent, the incense was condensed and assumed a reddish tint, which gradually became more and more diffused. We seemed to hear the thunder rolling, at first from a distance, then nearer, finally over our heads. It was as if the tower had-been shaken and the vault over our heads been rent. My knees trembled. Suddenly a flash of lightning shot through the red mass. The magician extended his staff, as if he had wished to stop it. He raised his voice anew, strong and powerful amidst the continued peals of thunder. The smoke grew thin again. From its wreaths there appeared before the magician in the immediate vicinity of the circle, and at the op- posite end of his staff, a dim apparition, a figure whose first aspect bereft me of my reason. I felt as if I had fallen to the floor,—as if I had been lost. ... I awakened with the perspiration of agony on my forehead, but fortunately in my own bed and in the nineteenth century. The view from my window is cheerful and enlivening. I see a river which bears proud ships, quays swarming with men, and broad streets with houses in a graceful and light Renats- sance style. I lived again in the present which pleased me the best, next to dreaming of the future... . They strove for something great, however, those learned magicians of the Middle Ages. Theirs was a mighty imagina- tive creation. It lies in ruins never to arise again. But the crumbled debris testify to the belief in all-embracing human power and knowledge. NOTES Page 23. The visual quality dominant in Stevenson and Conrad is characteristic of modern biography and fiction. Sense images have become an indispensable feature of the literature of our day. Writing was once too labored, formal, and self-conscious to use them spon- taneously and strongly. They have come into books and magazines because they abound in the everyday speech of most of us when we attempt to tell of what has happened or how things look. We can generally describe and narrate more vividly and effectively in oral than in written speech. This, we may suspect, is an inherited weakness, but is evidently curable. P. 28. Scenes and objects that seem well enough presented, accord- ing to principles illustrated in Chapter I, are often found capable of improvement beyond an organic arrangement of elements or parts. Imaging again the details of the example (p. 19) from Flandrau, we are led to ask ourselves, Did the Mexican hold the cage before himself as he descended, or did he set it down on the floor of the omnibus, and teach in after it on emerging? Which manner would be more likely to oie the attention of the people, including this author, on the street: On settling these questions, the scene begins to alter. It is more than likely that the parrot cage was stuffed, not with new shoes, but with old ones. To add ‘old’ will make the visualization more definite and sure. There will be small risk also in aiding the process by mention of the sombrero that such a Mexican would almost certainly wear. So the writer might have outlined his incidentally enlivening picture more suggestively and strongly, much perhaps like this: Once on Wall Street, I saw emerge through the door of an omnibus a parrot cage stuffed with old shoes, then the arm and sombrero of a young Mexican, bending forward to alight. The persistent center is still of course the parrot cage, as it is borne away along the street. Study of another description, more complex and extended, will be helpful here: The plan of the house was even more eccentric than had been reported. Some of the outside features also were remarkable. The foundation and the first story were of dressed gray stone, while the story above was of rough-faced brick. The hedge about the house, which was square, was green and square-trimmed all around, and topped with a single barbed wire. Iron gates, painted a shining black, gave access at the middle of each of the four sides. The third story of the hotise was low, and faced with cement or stucco, and the roof was flat. The house stood at the center of a grass-covered city block. The high porch in front was supported by four square pillars, which were white. A somewhat low square cupola surmounted the whole at the middle of the roof. We shall often note how helpful it is, in description, to use the eyes of another to visualize with. In the former instance, Flandrau’s “TI saw” is better, for us, than ee in Wall Street there was seen,” 358 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY etc. Among foregoing quoted paragraphs, we may compare other significant examples. So here we might well begin rewriting with “We came out upon a block vacant except for,” etc. The persistent center of the view is at once unmistakably the lone house at the middle of the block. Then, narrowing to features of the building, it identifies itself with the queer white pillars reaching to the third story. The white flat-roof cupola now draws our attention upward, and is naturally mentioned next. From here we take note of aspects downward till we reach the ground, the grassy square, and its encircling hedge. It is all singularly odd, and will be sufficiently picturesque if presented thus, approximately after the manner in which a visitor would inspect the scene: We came out, in a thickly built-up quarter of the city, upon a grass- grown square, vacant, save for a large cube-like house standing alone at the center, with two white box-like pillars in front supporting a porch at the level of the third story. There was a low square white cupola at the middle of the flat projecting roof. The highest of the three stories was of stucco, the middle one, of rough-faced brick, the first or lowest, of dressed gray stone. The block was enclosed with a square- trimmed green hedge, topped with a single barbed wire. Shining-black iron gates offered entry, one on each street, at the middle of the hedge. P. 35. A moment’s reflection will help us realize better the part which Sense Appeals play in the concerns of outside life. Millions of dollars are expended every week in thrusting upon our attention the realistic appearance of meats, drinks, confectionery, cosmetics, coiffures, gowns, ornaments, through use of cuts, fashion plates, billboards, and the like. Some pictorial advertisements are addressed to refined taste, but are prevailingly of the sort considered in this chapter. Outside of incidental allusion, they occur in literature as theme substance in novels and short stories, notably in Conrad’s Youth, and Lord Jim, in Kipling’s ‘Strange Ride,’ and in records of privation in sieges, polar exploration, as also in veritable or fanciful reports of South Sea travel or adventure. P. 45. The visualization of persons, as we at once discover, in- volves much more than imaging their outward looks. We picture these in fancy because of discerning even more distinctly in each case the inner self or personality. But we must wait till study of Chapter XVI to appreciate this fully. P. 76. This seems to have been the ‘undistributed,’ unspecific mean- ing in Maupassant’s descriptive formula: 'In order to describe a fire that flames, and a tree on the plain, one needs to keep looking at that flame and that tree, until to one’s eye they no longer resemble any other tree or any other flame. The skeleton configuration of an object constitutes its essence, its reality. The artist or even draftsman does what Maupassant prescribes, but does more, and does it quickly,—he analyzes. He cannot draw the out- line of any object unless or until he has discovered it in its individual lines and angles. P. 77. Conrad ventures (Youth, p. 76) this rather striking use of form for objects exhibiting it: Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. NOTES 359 P. 82. The first postulate of Description with each of us should be, Whatever I can see, that is, analyze into salient and significant ele- ments, I can command means to say. Whatever the art student finds possible to draw, the literary student should find possible to describe. P. 96. Narration is perforce dramatic. Visualizing narration has two scales, the scale of memory, and the scale of imagination. The scale of memory brings back the personal presence or group stature of people among whom we have figured. The scale of imagination presents the folk of whom we read or hear as at distance, as on some sort of a stage before us, some half-dozen yards or more away. P. 111. Of course the subject of Narration may be considered under other heads. The purpose in the divisions proposed here is mainly to administer the element of time, so that the student may canvass or at least rehearse the resources on which he will have to draw. P. 129. Many if not most people have a technic or personal differ- ential in conversation, out of which they cater for themselves and gen- erally for those about them delicate or subtle satisfactions. In fact, we are all continually trying experiments upon our mother speech, not only by saying the same things differently from other people, but dif- ferently from our last and perhaps all our former ways. The aunt who, playfully inquiring about her obese nephew, has hit upon the phrase, ‘How is his fatship this morning,’ furnishes one of a thousand illustra- tions. The word comes unsought in a flash of fancy, is quickly lost, and will probably never be heard again. But it gave, in this true inci- dent, a spice of pleasure to the interview. Bon mots like this fill a large place in the amenities of life, and hardly less in the fellowship of books. All intelligent speakers in every country are trying like experiments on the matter and manner of their respective languages. Born of these random locutions come needed additions to each nation’s speech. Some one hit upon and hazarded, not long ago, the figure graft, and the word has followed the ‘morning English drumbeat’ round the world. Considerably later, some keen-visioned man of affairs propounds overhead to distinguish plant and office expenses from other business costs, and the name is at once appropriated as indispensable by the whole country. Some one applies ‘assembled’ to a bicycle or automobile not all made in the same factory, and this bit of linguistic technic becomes a standard term. Among the thousands of such inventions, some few like ‘graft’? and ‘bootleg’ rise to the dictionary level. ‘Overhead,’ one might predict, will one day follow them. But the vast multitude of oral coinings will persist only within the unwritten vernacular until they are worn out or superseded. The purpose of this chapter is to arouse attention to the values in our orally invented mots, and to encourage learners of every age to ven- ture them circumspectly, not only in letter-writing, but in more deliber- ate and serious composition. Kipling did this, and won an ‘introduc- tion’ to his Plain Tales from no less a pundit of culture than Charles Eliot Norton. The spirit of classicism would have us suppress all per- sonal variants in diction, as was realized in France a hundred years ago when Chateaubriand and Madame de Staél excised their brilliant phrases from René and Atila, from Corinne and L’Allemagne. It is our lot to be born in an era of individualism which they did not live to see. Somewhat of its deeper significance and inspiration will be discussed in Chapter XXVI. 360 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY P. 148. To help clarify our notions on this disputed subject, may we not say that the orthodox literary essay is expositional writing eclec- tically pursued, mainly in a vein of meditation, and largely with the motive of artistic delectation? The ‘philosophical,’ the ‘political,’ and the ‘argumentative’ essay are permissive misnomers. The critical, the biographical, and the whimsical essay are recognized divisions of the generic idea. Any piece of writing that an author may choose to call an ‘essay’ can hardly be denied the pretensions of the name. Yet, in the face of this confusion, we are persuaded that there is or may be an excathedral, Stevensonian type of essay, which is an assaying at worth-while reflection, through what we call the association of ideas, but along (Chapter XXI) the path of discovery, with no foreknown or projected issue, the mind choosing its own steps, like the mind of one inditing a musical composition. To effect an expression of personality in a professional essay of this kind is the ambition of many, but the gift of few. P. 155. The ascertained fact that Europe and Africa were once united by land having a curved coast line furnishes the basis of the explana- tion here. The principle that cranes preferably migrate over a land course, and the law of inherited habit, supply the grounds of the expo- sition. P. 172. It is a notion rather generally held that we are drawing char- acter when, for instance, we affirm that A is ‘a real man,’ or that some certain young lady B is ‘too cute for anything. But by this we are really throwing A into a class along with perhaps half-a-billion others, or making B indistinguishable from a mass of brilliant women as numer- ous possibly as the whole population of France or even Russia. The impulse in such cases is centrifugal, and deals properly with stray objects not yet classified. We are to understand there are no duplicates in the material universe, much less among human creatures endowed with traits that we sum up as character. The impulse to characterize, on the contrary, is centripetal, and forces us to thrust upon attention some- thing strikingly individual, and so set our hearer at synthesizing a whole nature to match the unique manifestation. P. 173. Writers of the first class take over the oral modes of char- acter-drawing into literature as a matter of course. Authors less gifted fail to command the knack, or even identify the process, of those who do. Trollope tells naively thus, as it would seem, of his own empiric struggles: It is to be regretted that no mental method of daguerreotype or photography has yet been discovered by which the characters of men can be reduced to writing and put into grammatical language with an unerring precision of truthful description. How often does the novelist feel, ay, and the historian also and the biographer, that he has conceived within his mind and accurately depicted on the tablet of his brain the full character and personage of a man, and that nevertheless, when he flies to pen and ink to perpetuate the portrait, his words forsake, elude, disappoint, and play the deuce with him, till at the end of a dozen pages, the man described has not more resemblance to the man conceived than the sign-board at the corner of the street has to the Duke of Cambridge. —Barchester Towers I. 232. The degree to which writers of fiction are beginning to utilize the plain method of life is peculiarly interesting. The following char- acterization from (p. 5) Possession, by Mazo de la Roche, brings away no odor from the literary workshop: NOTES 361 . A white wooden house appeared like some one sitting at the road side. " Hobbs was saying This is where .Chard ie You'll not find him much of a neighbor. Now I’ll just tell you what he’s like. Not long ago he hired some men from Mistwell to help him dig drains. Very well; when the end of the week came he paid the men, all but old Peek. And he says to him— Peek, you ‘re so old and feeble you can’t do as much as the others, so you'll come back to work two days more before I give ye a week’s wage. And the poor old devil had to. So now I’ve introduced Chard, the Superintendent of the Sunday-school, and a damned good farmer. P. 182. In the exigencies of oral characterization, we often merge kind and degree in an appeal of degree for both. This condensation is a characteristic of the Scotch ‘school’ of fiction, and more especially of the Kailyard group, whose prominence has been greatly due to this phase of the modern ‘return to nature.’ 198. We should fix in our minds this universal postulate of Characterization: There is no man or woman above idiocy or insanity whose personality cannot be veritably portrayed, and at the same time made an object of extraordinary human and artistic interest. We have but to appeal to Shylock and Falstaff and Cleopatra as illustrative proofs. P. 205. Theoretically considered, appeals of emotion would seem un- distinguishable from appeals of character. But a little observation will show that we discriminate between the two kind of ‘effects given’ both consciously and confidently. We are often surprised at some outburst in a friend, but conclude that what we have witnessed is no proper symptom of personality. Again, in another case, we recognize that the paroxysm cannot be chargeable to anything less than character, and we revise our standing estimate accordingly. P. 207. Here we reach the prime discovery that the self is in essence not discoverable by acts or states which, on the part of the person to be characterized, involve attention. This proper self is not what we generally understand as ‘consciousness. There are in fact two selves, the conscious, and the subconscious. Discernment of the subconscious self or personality is not reached through such ‘appeals’ as we have been considering. Subconsciousness signs are the ultimates of human revealment and discovery. Here are more typical illustrations: Christy, standing on tiptoe, from boyish habit, to hang his hat up, though he is quite tall enough to reach the peg.—Shaw: The Devil’s Disciple, p. 6. He would pause and stare at nothing in particular, sometimes rubbing a leaf between finger and thumb, or snipping at the air with his garden- ing shears.—Deeping: The Strong Hand, p. 78. Christina was silent. She stretched out her arm and looked at it a moment absently, turning it so as to see—or almost to see—the dimple in her elbow.—James: Roderick Hudson, x, p. 141. Subconsciousness signs are perhaps discerned most readily when the person under notice’ tries to do two things at the same time. One of the things attempted masses attention. The other shows the man, the woman. The real humanness, the true worth and nobility in others and in ourselves, stand out self-revealed, self-registered. By subconscious- ness signs only do we find one another out. Moreover, only authors of rare vision and penetration present the characters they create by re- vealments of the subconscious self. But the ordinary conditions of in- dustrial and social life involve no such recourse to the highest human philosophy and art. The business head selects his clerks and even man- 862 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY agers by rule-of-thumb elimination through the doctrine of ‘appeals.’ The housewife chooses her cook and probably her lady’s maid by such interpretation of ‘effects given’ as any one of her class in all the world would use. The object of characterization at first in every sort of novel is to set up for the reader a neighborhood probably little different in kind from the one he was born in, or at the moment hails from. But presently there is differentiation of two or three worth-while person- alities from the others. These the author has found out and presents in their spiritual individualities by letting us see signs of their sub- conscious selves. Meredith thus subtly reveals Lady Jocelyn (Chapter XXIX) in Evan Harrington. When Browning, in Luria (I. 97-100) wishes us to discover that his title character, under shadow of assas- Sination because suspected of intriguing with the enemy, is consum- mately true, he makes us listen to the testimony of one who has been Sune |eDon the man in unguarded moments, and is now disabused of doubt: : . Here I sit, your scribe, And in and out goes Luria, days and nights; This Puccio comes; the Moor—his other friend, Hussain; they talk—that’s all feigned easily; He speaks (I would not listen if I could), Reads, orders, counsels:—but he vests sometimes— I see him stand and eat, sleep stretched an hour On the lynx-skins yonder; hold his bared black arms Into the sun from the tent-opening; laugh When his horse drops the forage from his teeth And neighs to hear him hum his Moorish songs. That man believes in Florence, as the saint Tied to the wheel believes in God! The italics here are of course not Browning’s. The process this author uses, or rather makes his agent use, is the one employed by artists before they give sittings to their patrons. Murray Mackay has lately said, “I always spend a period of time getting acquainted with my sub- ject. I get him to relax and try to tune in on his wave length, so to speak. If my personality is sensitive to his, the true picture of his soul will paint itself into my hands, not by reasoning out the details of the portrait, but through the operation of a hidden, inner perception that has the qualities of feeling rather than clear-cut thought.” Professor Villard, in Jane Austin and Her Work, shows in detail how this author exquisitely develops the character of Emma, in her novel of that name, through subconscious ‘appeals’ or signs. P. 216. We are perhaps at times unclear as to what originality is, or whether anybody or anything can be rightly called original. Men had insight thousands of years ago, and may have divined truths which, lost for generations, are now rediscovered, and so credited only to modern thought. Evidently, the claims of first discovery cannot be abso- lutely established or guaranteed. But it is instinctive with us to recog- nize it and credit it so far as it can be known. Hence our pragmatic plan of honoring and vindicating priority of promulgation. As to the fact of originality, all the world assumes it, and accepts it as a value, not only in patent law, but universally in the domain of ideas as well as of action. P. 263. In poetry, typically, ideas that cannot but be emotionally or spiritually discerned are used to communicate ideas intended to be in- tellectually perceived: NOTES 363 Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence The life o’ the building. But in prose, typically, ideas that may involve eventual emotional effect are expressed in literal or intellectual terms: Duncan has been stabbed to death in his sleep. So prose cannot take on the high seriousness that comes from indirect- ness of phrase, such as seen in Macduff’s outburst, and in the opening lines of The Holy Grail. That belongs to poetry alone, and cannot be denied the reinforcement of high seriousness contributed from what we call the ‘verse,’ or the ‘poetic’ form. P. 267. This truth was doubtless what Keats had in mind when he said Truth is Beauty, and Beauty, Truth. But this is misleading, for each is an inclusive manifestation of a spiritual solidarity. One side of the shield seems gold, and the other, silver, but the shield is both on either side. Our cognition of unconditioned Truth, Law, Moral Order is in part a cognition of unconditioned Beauty. These two fa- miliar lines from Tennyson’s The Princess (iii. 1, 2) will illustrate: Morn in the white wake of the morning star ‘ Came furrowing all the orient into gold. To a mind especially sensitive to effects of color, the scene will first be one of beauty and inspire delight. In a mind alive to the vastness of the forces that are hurling and whirling our earth through space the lines will first arouse a frame of high seriousness or sublimity. But the reaction we call sublimity will after a moment give way to a lesser sentiment of beauty, as will the reaction of delight, in the first instance, merge itself into a less insistent feeling of the sublime. Trial of this sentence upon a miscellaneous group of readers will show, as here out- lined, that some are first more conscious of the one reaction, and some, the other, but that all will confidently testify in the end alike to an experience of the sublime, and of beauty, in differing degrees. Aristotle clearly insists that his o7ovdacéry¢ ‘high seriousness, is the basic, standard frame of the poet when he sees, and is the basic, stand- ard quality in what he says. But while the poet’s cognitions are major in high seriousness or sublimity, they are also minor in excel- lence, goodness, beauty. For o7ovdaioc, the adjective from which Aris- totle’s word for ‘high seriousness’ comes, means also ‘excellent,’ or what in philosophic language is known as ‘Beauty.’ Aristotle does not add that the other part of the meaning in o7ovdaidryc] might furnish forth poets of a lower class. What he says holds true of our greater poets, as Shakespeare. Tennyson, by count of instances, is a poet of the major class, as is Keats, of the minor. So, in prose, Carlyle contrasts ‘high- serious’ (o7ovdaioc) with, let us say, Fiona MacLeod (o7ovdaioc) ‘charm- ful in excellence, goodness, beauty.’ t. Though the metaphor in a sentence may rank no higher grammatically than an adjective or an adverbial modifier, it may yet aa ay a of a condensed allegory. Cf. Tennyson’s line (Princess . 124), She anewer’d sharply that I talk’d astray. 364 HOW TO DESCRIBE AND NARRATE VISUALLY | P. 283. Within a few years after Combe’s work was reprinted i: this country, more than 300,000 copies had been sold, and seven sets o stereotype plates had been cast to overtake the demand. Interest in th new (supposed) science of Phrenology largely accounts for its popu larity. P. 291. Those unacquainted with the influence of the Paris salon may conveniently gain some acquaintance with it from Vol. I of George Ticknor’s Life, Letters and Journals. Writing of a later visit to Europe in 1857, Ticknor observes: ‘Paris is externally the most magnificeni| capital in Europe. But where are the old salons,—their grace, their charming and peculiar wit, their conversation that impressed its charac- ter upon the language itself, and made it, in many. respects, what it is.’ But Holmes in his three years’ stay, begun in 1833, was not too late to gather like impressions with those which Ticknor prized. The effect of French naturalness and brilliancy is seen on comparing the ‘autocrat’ in the New England Magazine of 1831 with the ‘autocrat’ in the Atlantic of 1857. P. 292. In tracing the genesis of the concrete manner, one should not neglect Spenser, whose whole work, and notably his View of the State of Ireland, seems inspired by an almost modern dislike for the literal and abstract. i en it aN he AV i Lhe . & ae ”