DESCRIPTION
61. Observation.—The first recommendation given in beginning any new form of composition is always to arrange what you wish to say in a logical and orderly manner, by means of an outline, either mental or written. In description, however, the first thing to do is to observe the subject of your composition, carefully, completely, and accurately.
You will be surprised to see how very carelessly you observe, as a rule, even things with which you are very familiar.
Try, offhand, without further examination, to write a description of a piece of money (copper, nickel, silver, gold, or paper), giving the dimensions and the color, and stating what some of the printing on it is; and try in the same way to describe the face of a watch, telling the size and length of the hands, how they run, and what the printing is; to give an accurate and detailed account of the appearance of the front of your school building or church, your next door neighbor's house, the mechanism of a lamp, the exact disposition of the furniture in your parlor at home, a cornstalk (size of leaves, shape, how they are set on the stalk, where the ears grow, how many wrappings of husk inclose them, etc.), a violet, a silk hat (height, width, shape, lining, width of brim, etc.), a cat's forefeet (number of toes, sheath for the nail, how they curve in, why they do not penetrate the cushioned foot in walking, etc.), a common fly, a robin redbreast, the arrangement of panels in the front door of your house, an English sparrow, a postage stamp. Tell how a cow lies down; a horse; a dog.
By such experiments you will find that you are hampered not by difficulty in expressing what you know, but by the great gaps in your knowledge of even such very familiar objects. You will discover that you have never really looked at them, although you may have seemed to do so every day since you can remember.
Some people seem to have opened more eyes than others, they see with such force and distinctness; their vision penetrates the tangle and obscurity where that of others fails like a spent or impotent bullet. How many eyes did Gilbert White open? How many did Henry Thoreau? How many did Audubon? How many does the hunter, matching his sight against the keen and alert senses of a deer or a moose or a fox or a wolf. Not outward eyes but inward. We open another eye whenever we see beyond the first general features or outlines of things—whenever we grasp the special details and characteristic markings that this mask covers. Science confers new powers of vision. Wherever you have learned to discriminate the birds, or the plants, or the geological features of a country, it is as if new and keener eyes were added.... We think we have looked at a thing sharply until we are asked for its specific features. I thought I knew exactly the form of the leaf of the tulip tree, until one day a lady asked me to draw the outlines of one.... The habit of observation is the habit of clear and decisive gazing; not by a first, casual glance, but by a steady, deliberate aim of the eye are the rare and characteristic things discovered. You must look intently and hold your eye firmly to the spot, to see more than do the rank and file of mankind.—John Burroughs: Locusts and Wild Honey.
Description by means of writing is often compared to the work of an artist, since the aim of both artist and writer is to present a visual image of their subject. But the writer of a description is more like a Japanese artist than one of his own race. The artists of Japan look long and fixedly at an object or scene or person, and then produce the picture from memory. In general, it is not often easy to write your description while you are actually in presence of the thing you wish to picture, so that after quick, keen, and accurate observation you should try to cultivate a retentive memory for details. Try cultivating both of these qualities by some of the following class exercises.
Exercise 102.—1. Look for one minute by the clock at your teacher's desk, and then without another glance see who can describe it with the most accuracy and completeness. 2. Turn to the title-page of this book, look at it for a moment, and then try to reproduce it. 3. Examine your own shoe for a moment and see how clearly you can describe it. 4. The stove or steam radiator in your room. 5. What you see from the window nearest you after a moment's gaze. 6. Just how the inside of your desk looks now—exact place of books, pencils, note books, etc. 7. Just how the pupil next you is dressed, with as many details as a two-minute gaze will show you. 8. The exact arrangement of maps, pictures, reports, plants, etc., about the wall of your class room.
As you go about your house or school, in the streets, or in the woods, try this exercise, either in competition with a companion, or simply for your own satisfaction. In passing a shop window, see how many of the objects displayed you can remember, or in passing a brook, try to observe rapidly but accurately the exact nature of the banks at the place you crossed. See how definitely you can impress on your mind the appearance of any house you pass, or of a vehicle which passes you. After a moment's steady look at your mother's work-basket see how completely you can describe it,—or the dining table set for dinner, or the front hall, with wraps and rubbers in it, or the parlor with several people in it, or the minister preaching in church. You will be surprised to find how much you have overlooked before, even in scenes which have been constantly before you. You will see that Mr. Burroughs does not exaggerate when he says that when we observe carefully and accurately, it is as though we had opened a new pair of eyes, "not outward but inward."
62. General Scientific Description.—Notice the difference between these two descriptions:—
1. Gentiàna crinita, Froel. Fringed Gentian. Leaves lanceolate or broader, with rounded or heart-shaped base; flowers solitary on long peduncles terminating the stem or simple branches; calyx with 4 unequal lobes; corolla sky blue, showy, 2' long, funnel form, the 4 wedge-obovate lobes with margins cut into a long and delicate fringe. N. Eng., W. and S.—Leavitt's Outlines of Botany.