different at one point of time from what it is at another. A forest in broad daylight is quite a different thing from what it is at midnight, as any small boy will tell you. Quite different, also, are a cold, dreary day in March and a burning, dusty day in August, or a meadow-land before and after a sudden thunder-storm. If time has any bearing at all on a description, it must be as definitely fixed as the point of view, and if the time changes, the reader must be just as carefully informed of the change as he is of a change in the point of sight.

Note, for instance, with what care the author of A Dakota Prairie (Exercise 82) indicates the change in time in the scene he describes. Such sentences as, "It was about five o'clock in a day in late June," "The silence of the prairie at night was well-nigh terrible," and "In the daytime, however, and especially on a morning, the prairie was another thing," not to mention the phrases and the words thrown in here and there to help in the timeeffects, are essential to the description, and add not a little to its vividness. Note, also, how the time is indicated in the following stanzas, and how each change in time is made evident:

MARIANA

BY TENNYSON

Upon the middle of the night,

Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:

From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her without hope of change,

In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,

I would that I were dead!"

And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up
and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,

She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell

Upon her bed, across her brow.

She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

All day within the dreary house,

The doors upon their hinges creak'd; The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,

Or from the crevice peer'd about.

Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof

The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.

Then, said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!" 1

Exercise 86

1. Determine the point of time in the descriptive selections in this book. If the point of time changes, note whether the reader is informed of the change.

2. Bring to the class two descriptive passages in which the point of time is an important factor.

3. Read A Dakota Prairie, and then describe the scene as you imagine it might appear in the winter.

4. Rewrite two of the descriptions you wrote for Exercise 85, putting in such touches of time as you think will add to the vividness of the descriptions.

5. Describe a city street scene during fair weather.

6. Describe the same scene after a sudden shower.

7. Describe a country road after a thunder-storm in June.

8. Write a description of a forest scene at midday of a hot day in August.

9. Write a description of the same scene in moonlight.

10. Describe the scene from a window in your house on a clear, calm morning.

11. Describe the same scene during a dense fog.

12. Describe a coast scene during a high wind.

13. Take a walk in the rain, and write your impressions.

14. Describe a scene about your home during a snow-storm.

15. Write a description of a summer farm scene, — a ploughing, cultivating, haying, harvesting, or corn-husking scene. Make the point of time a prominent element in your description. See the first selection in Exercise 82.

1 The whole poem, of which only four stanzas are printed here, should be read to the class.

SECTION 74

The Central Thought

Compare these two bits of description:

1. Third and fourth quills about equal, fifth a little shorter, second longer than sixth; tail slightly rounded; above olive-gray, top and sides of the head black; chin and throat white, streaked with black; eyelids, and a spot above the eye anteriorly, white; under parts and inside of the wings chestnut-brown; the under tail coverts with tibiæ white, showing the plumbeous inner portions of the feathers; wings dark-brown, the feathers all edged more or less with paleash; tail still darker, the extreme feathers tipped with white; bill yellow, dusky along the ridge and at the tip.-SAMUELS, Birds of New England.

2. But when vivid color is wanted, what can surpass or equal our cardinal-flower? There is a glow about this flower as if color emanated from it as from a live coal. The eye is baffled and does not seem to reach the surface of the petal; it does not see the texture or material part as it does in other flowers, but rests in a steady, still radiance. It is not so much something colored as it is color itself. And then the moist, cool, shady places it affects, usually where it has no floral rivals, and where the large, dark shadows need just such a dab of fire. Often, too, we see it double, its reflected image in some dark pool heightening its effect. John Burroughs, Riverby.

The difference between these two descriptions is instantly felt, but on what does it depend? Evidently the difference depends - aside from the controlling purpose on the selection of details to emphasize a central thought. In the first description, it is a scientific description of the common robin, - the details are listed one after the other without subordination there has been no selection of details to emphasize a central thought. In the second description, on the contrary, each detail has been carefully selected and skilfully placed, and this

has been done for a purpose to bring into prominence the central thought of the description, the vivid color of the cardinal flower. The result of this difference is, as might be expected, that the second description is highly suggestive, and that the first description is most decidedly not suggestive. However serviceable the first description may be to science as a means of identification, it has no artistic value whatever.

Every description, therefore, if it is to be at all effective for any other than a merely explanatory purpose, should have a central thought, or produce a single distinct impression, made strikingly prominent by careful selection and skilful subordination of details. This central thought, this single distinct impression, should be the thought, or the impression, that leaps to the senses when the object to be described is first beheld. Then, with this central thought, this single distinct impression, used as a guide, only such details should be selected as will, when properly subordinated, bring it prominently to the attention of the reader.

Exercise 87

What the central thought of a description may be, and how it can be emphasized by selection and subordination of details, will best be understood by a study of the following pieces of description. What is the central thought in each of these descriptions? How is this central thought made evident to the reader? What details emphasize it?

1 The central thought, even in the most effective descriptions, is not always as definitely stated as in this case. Often enough the central thought is not stated at all, it being merely some single distinct impression that pervades the whole description; as, for example, the great loneliness of Mariana in Tennyson's poem (Section 73), or the air of gloom, mystery, or horror that pervades many of the situations in Poe's stories.