This sort of exercise is harder than anything you have yet tried, for you must be at once complete and full in your account and yet must continue to go on in the sort of picture making you have been practicing. In a way, this is almost a return to some of the exercises in narrative which you have had, since a description of several happenings in order of time is really a narrative. At any rate, in trying this sort of description you are like a person who has been learning to play the piano, first with the right hand and then with the left, and finally with both together in a simple but complete melody. You are to keep in mind that you have two aims in view: to be as full as is necessary to give an accurate idea of the facts, and to attempt to present a picture.
Exercise 116.—Describe accurately, as though for a newspaper or magazine, but trying to reproduce some of the essential characters of the event:—
A fire drill in your school; how you celebrate Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Hallowe'en, New Year's Day; laying the corner stone of a new building; the procession of the veterans on Decoration Day; a political parade or meeting; a wedding; a funeral; the parade of the Fire Department; a play or entertainment given by your school.
71. Picture Making of Scenes of Action.—Here, instead of describing something stationary, like a house or landscape, the writer has taken one moment of a scene of action, and has attempted to make, as it were, a snapshot photograph of it.
To-day the large side doors were thrown open toward the sun to admit a beautiful light to the immediate spot of the shearers' operations, which was the wood threshing floor in the center, formed of thick oak, black with age. Here the shearers knelt, the sun slanting in on their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the polished shears they flourished, causing them to bristle with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man. Beneath them a captive sheep lay panting, increasing the rapidity of its pants as misgiving merged in terror, till it quivered like the hot landscape outside.—Thomas Hardy: Far from the Madding Crowd.
All the painters of historical pictures try in the same way to paint one moment of a well-known incident, and they select some significant moment; that is, one where the action tells something of the story involved.
Exercise 117.—I. Imagine that you are about to paint a picture of any one of the following scenes, and describe what comes into your mind when you think of the incident. Do not tell the story—simply describe the scene at a given moment.
1. Columbus sighting land. 2. Columbus landing. 3. The burial of De Soto. 4. Pocohontas saving the life of John Smith. 5. Penn making a treaty with the Indians. 6. A scene in the attack on Braddock by Indian skirmishers. 7. An night attack by Indians on a colonial settlement. 8. The discovery of Major André. 9. King Alfred and the cakes. 10. The rain of manna on the Children of Israel.
II. Try in the following subjects to make a picture which would serve as illustration to a story. See if you can make the picture recognizable, so that your classmates can tell what the story is from the one scene from it which you present them.
1. Horatius at the bridge. 2. The Sleeping Beauty. 3. William Tell and the apple. 4. Cinderella trying on the slipper. 5. Ivanhoe and Rebecca during the progress of the battle which Rebecca is describing. 6. Ulysses, returned to Ithaca, is recognized by his old dog Argus. 7. Uncle Remus telling stories to the little boy. 8. Barbara Frietchie. 9. Robinson Crusoe and the footprints.
Here is a description, by Parkman, of the robbing of a train of pack horses carrying valuable goods.
Advancing deeper among the mountains, they began to descend the valley at the foot of Sidling Hill. The laden horses plodded knee-deep in snow. The mountains towered above the wayfarers in gray desolation, and the leafless forest howled dreary music to the wind of March.
Suddenly, from behind snow-beplastered trunks and shaggy bushes of evergreen, uncouth apparitions started into view. Wild visages protruded, grotesquely horrible with vermilion and ocher, white lead and soot; stalwart limbs appeared, encased in buckskin; and rusty rifles thrust out their long muzzles. In front and flank and all around them white puffs of smoke and sharp reports assailed the bewildered senses of the travelers.—Francis Parkman: The Conspiracy of Pontiac.
With this description you are again almost back to narration. The extract presents two pictures, and in so doing, relates a story.