song.

 

--ALEXANDER POPE, _Windsor Forest_.

 

The moment our discourse rises above the ground-line of familiar facts, and is

inflamed with passion or exalted thought, it clothes itself in images. A man

conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual processes, will find that

always a material image, more or less luminous, arises in his mind,

contemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the vestment of the

thought.... This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with

the present action of the mind. It is proper creation.

 

--RALPH WALDO EMERSON, _Nature_.

 

Like other valuable resources in public speaking, description loses its power

when carried to an extreme. Over-ornamentation makes the subject ridiculous. A

dust-cloth is a very useful thing, but why embroider it? Whether description

shall be restrained within its proper and important limits, or be encouraged to

run riot, is the personal choice that comes before every speaker, for man's

earliest literary tendency is to depict.

 

_The Nature of Description_

 

To describe is to call up a picture in the mind of the hearer. "In talking of

description we naturally speak of portraying, delineating, coloring, and all the