4. Describe an unfurnished room. Shape, size, position, and number of windows, the fireplace, etc., should be definite. Be sure to give the point of view. To say "On my right hand," "In front of me," or any similar phrases means nothing unless the reader knows where you are.

In these exercises the pupil will doubtless employ the paragraph of particulars. This is the most common in description. Other forms are valuable.

5. Using a paragraph telling what it was not, finish this: I followed the great singer to her home. Imagine my surprise in finding that the house in which this lady lived was not a home of luxury and splendor,--not even a home of comfort. Go on with the details of a home of luxury which were _not_ there. Finish with what you did see.

This is really a description of two houses set in artistic contrast to heighten the effect. Remember you are outside.

6. By the use of comparison finish this: The home of my poor little friend was but little better than a barn. Choose only such details as emphasize the barn-like appearance of the home. There is but one room.

Remember where you are standing; and keep in mind the effect you wish to produce.

7. Using a moving point of view, describe an interior. Do not have too many rooms.

8. Furnish the room described in number four to suit your taste. Tell how it looks. Remember that a few things give character to a room.

9. Describe your childhood's home as it would look to you after years of absence.

10. Using a paragraph of the obverse, describe the appearance of the house from which you were driven by the cruelty of a drunken father.

11. Describe a single tree standing alone in a field. It will be well for the teacher to read to the class some descriptions of trees,--Lowell's "Birch" and "Oak," "Under the Willows," and some stanzas from "An Indian Summer Reverie." Holmes has some good paragraphs on trees in "The Autocrat." Any good tree descriptions will help pupils to do it better than they can without suggestion. They should describe their own tree, however.

12. Describe some single flower growing wild. Read Lowell's "Dandelion," "Violet, Sweet Violet," Wordsworth's "Daisy," "The Daffodils," "The Small Celandine," and Burns's "Daisy." These do not so much describe as they arouse a feeling of love for the flowers which will show itself in the composition.

13. Describe a view of a lake. If possible, have your point of view above the lake and use the paragraph of comparison.

14. Describe a landscape from a single point of view. Read Curtis's "My Castles in Spain" from "Prue and I," many descriptions in "An Inland Voyage" by Stevenson, and "Bay Street" by Bliss Carman in "The Atlantic Monthly."

15. Describe your first view of a small cluster of houses or a small town.

16. Approach the town, describing its principal features. Keep the reader informed as to where you are.

17. Describe a dog of your own.

18. Describe a dog of your neighbor's. Before the description is undertaken read "Our Dogs" and "Rab" by Dr. Brown; "A Dog of Flanders"

by Ouida. Scott has some noble fellows in his novels.

19. Describe a flock of chickens. There are good descriptions of chickens in "The House of the Seven Gables" and in "Sketches" by Dickens.

20. Describe the burning of your own home. Be careful not to narrate.

21. Describe a stranger you met on the street to-day. It is easier to describe a person if you and the person you describe move toward each other. Remember that you begin the description at a distance. Details should be mentioned as they actually come into view.

22. Describe your father in his favorite corner at home.

23. Describe a person you do not like, by telling what he is not.

24. Describe a person you admire, but are not acquainted with, using the paragraph of comparisons.

25. Describe a picture.

It would be well to have at the end of this year four or five stories written, in which description plays a part. Its principal use is to give the setting to the story, to give concreteness to the characters, and to accent the mood of the story.

Most passages of description are short. Rarely will any pupil write over three hundred words. One hundred are often better. The short composition gives an opportunity for the study of accuracy of expression. What details to include; in what order to arrange them that they produce the best effect, both of vividness and naturalness; and the influence of the point of view and the purpose of the author on the unity of description should be kept constantly present in the exercises. Careful attention should be paid to choice of words, for on right words depends in a large degree the vividness of a description.

Right words in well-massed paragraphs of vivid description should be the object this term.

CHAPTER V

EXPOSITION

So far we have studied discourse which deals with things,--things active, doing something, considered under the head of narration; and things at rest, and pictured, considered in description. Now we come to exposition, which deals with ideas either separately or in combinations. Instead of Mr. Smith's horse, exposition treats of the general term, horse. "The Great Stone Face" may have taught a lesson by its story, but the discussion of the value of lofty ideals is a subject for exposition.

General Terms Difficult.

That general terms and propositions are harder to get hold of than concrete facts is readily apparent in the first reading of an author like Emerson. To a young person it means little. Yet when he puts in the place of the general terms some specific examples, and so verifies the statements, the general propositions have a mine of meaning, and "the sense of the author is as broad as the world." This stanza from Lowell is but little suggestive to young readers:--

"Such earnest natures are the fiery pith, The compact nucleus, round which systems grow!

Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith, And whirls impregnate with the central glow."[14]

Yet when Columbus and Luther and Garrison are mentioned as illustrations of the meaning, it becomes world-wide in its application. Still in order to get at the thought, there is first the need of the specific and the concrete; afterward we pass to the general and the abstract.

As abstract ideas are harder to get hold of than concrete facts, so exposition has difficulties greater than those found in narration and description. It is not so hard to tell what belongs in a story; the events are all distinct. Nor is it so difficult to know what to include in a description; one can look and see. In exposition this is not so. In most minds ideas do not have distinct limits; the edges rather are indistinct. It is hard to tell where the idea stops. In writing of "The Uses of Coal," it is easy to wander over an indistinct boundary and to take a survey of "The Origin of Coal." Not only may one include what unquestionably should be excluded, but there is no definite guide to the arrangement of the materials, such as was found in narration. There a sequence of time was an almost infallible rule; here the writer must search carefully how to arrange hazy ideas in some effective form. As discourse comes to deal more with general ideas, the difficulties of writing increase; and the difficulties are not due to any new principles of structure which must be introduced.

When one says that the material should be selected according to the familiar law of Unity, he has given the guiding principle. Yet the real difficulty is still before an author: it is to decide what stamp to put upon such elusive matter as ideas. They cannot be kept long enough in the twilight of consciousness to analyze them; and often ideas that have been marked "accepted" have, upon reexamination, to be "rejected." To examine ideas--the material used in this form of discourse--so thoroughly that they may be accurately, definitely known in their backward relation and their bearing upon what follows, this is the seat of the difficulty in exposition.

Exposition may conveniently be classified into exposition of a term, or definition; and exposition of a proposition, which is generally suggested by the term exposition.

Definition.

Definition of a word means giving its limits or boundaries. Of man it might be said that it is a living animal, having a strong bony skeleton; that this skeleton consists of a trunk from which extend four limbs, called arms and legs, and is surmounted by a bony cavity, called a skull; that the skeleton protects the vital organs, and is itself covered by a muscular tissue which moves the bones and gives a rounded beauty to their ugliness; that man has a highly developed nervous system, the centre of which is the brain placed in the skull.

So a person might go on for pages, enumerating the attributes which, taken together, make up the general idea of man.

Exposition and Description distinguished.

This sort of exposition is very near description; indeed, were the purpose different, it would be description. The purpose, however, is not to tell how an individual looks, but to place the object in a class. It is therefore not description, but exposition. Moreover, the method is different. In description those characteristics are given that distinguish the object from the rest of the class; while in exposition those qualities are selected which are common to all objects of its class.

Logical Definition.

On account of the length of the definition by an enumeration of all the attributes, it is not frequently used except in long treatises.

For it there has been substituted what is called a _logical definition._ Instead of naming all the characteristics of an object, a logical definition groups many attributes under one general term, and then adds a quality which distinguishes the object from the others of the general class. Man has been defined as the "reasoning animal." In this definition a large number of attributes have been gathered together in the general term "animal;" then man is separated from the whole class "animal" by the word "reasoning." A logical definition consists, then, of two parts: the general term naming the genus, and the limiting term naming the distinguishing attribute called the differentia.

Genus and Differentia.

Genus and differentia are found in every good definition. The _genus_ should be a term more general than the term defined. "Man is a person who reasons" is a poor definition; because "person" is no more general than "man." "A canine is a dog that is wild" is very bad, because "dog," the general term in the definition, is less general than the word defined. However, to say that "a dog is a canine that has been domesticated," is a definition in which the genus is more general than the term defined.

Next, the genus should be a term well understood. "Man is a mammal who reasons" is all right, in having a genus more general than the term defined, but the definition fails with many because "mammal" is not well understood. "Botany is that branch of biology which treats of plant life" has in it the same error. "Biology" is not so well understood as "botany," though it is a more general term. In cases of this sort, the writer should go farther toward the more general until he finds a term perfectly clear to all. "Man is an animal that reasons," "botany is the branch of science that treats of plant life,"

would both be easily understood. The genus should be a term better understood than the term defined; and it should be a term more general than the term defined.