detailed description because it leaves a unified, vivid impression, and that is

what we need. Here is a present-day bit of suggestion: "General Trinkle was a

gnarly oak of a man--rough, solid, and safe; you always knew where to find him."

Dickens presents Miss Peecher as: "A little pin-cushion, a little housewife, a

little book, a little work-box, a little set of tables and weights and measures,

and a little woman all in one." In his "Knickerbocker's" "History of New York,"

Irving portrays Wouter van Twiller as "a robustious beer-barrel, standing on

skids."

 

Whatever forms of description you neglect, be sure to master the art of

suggestion.

 

_Description may be by simple hint._ Lowell notes a happy instance of this sort

of picturing by intimation when he says of Chaucer: "Sometimes he describes

amply by the merest hint, as where the Friar, before setting himself down,

drives away the cat. We know without need of more words that he has chosen the

snuggest corner."

 

_Description may depict a thing by its effects._ "When the spectator's eye is

dazzled, and he shades it," says Mozley in his "Essays," "we form the idea of a

splendid object; when his face turns pale, of a horrible one; from his quick

wonder and admiration we form the idea of great beauty; from his silent awe, of

great majesty."

 

_Brief description may be by epithet._ "Blue-eyed," "white-armed,"