This way of telling a story by a succession of pictures is a favorite one with comic illustrators, but it is also used very often in writing, although in a real narration explanatory matter is added between the scenes.
Exercise 118.—The following topics are given as subjects for description only, and you are to try to give as vivid a picture of the two scenes as you can, letting the story tell itself by inference.
1. Boys skating at top speed along a river with a pack of wolves in the distance. A camp of wood choppers beside the river, a fire burning, the boys fallen exhausted, and men starting up with guns in their hands.
2. People on a raft waving coats and handkerchiefs wildly. On board a big ocean steamer, with passengers gathered around the group of rescued castaways.
3. A Christmas tree inside a richly furnished room with well-dressed children gathered around it. Outside in the snow a group of poor children looking in at the window.
4. A boy with a swollen jaw in the dentist's chair. A group of smaller children to whom the boy proudly holds up a tooth.
5. A hen calling wildly to her chickens and trying to cover them with her wings, and a farmer running up with a gun. The farmer has his gun in one hand, and with the other holds up a big hen-hawk for a group of people to see.
6. A street with everybody running in one direction, pointing ahead. A house on fire with firemen climbing up on ladders.
7. A family assembled at the dinner table in the evening quietly talking together. A man taps on the window pane outside; every one starts up in surprise and great pleasure, as if he were a relative returned from travels.
8. A group of women gathered at the end of a pier on a stormy night, straining their eyes anxiously out to sea. A fisherman returning up the beach, at early dawn, with a net full of fish on his back. In the background a small house with children running out to meet him.
72. Travel.—It is hard to draw a definite line between descriptive writing and narrative writing, since description is very often needed to make a narration interesting, and sometimes to make it complete. There is one kind of composition where the two methods of writing are needed in almost equal quantities, and that is in stories of travel. In writing an account of a journey, you have a distinct story to tell, since you are narrating a series of events that took place one after the other; but without description of what you saw the account is scarcely worth writing at all. Your aim is to give your reader a clear idea of the course of your journey, and you can only do this by a combination of narration and description, by telling what happened and then by trying to make a picture of the event. So that there are two main things to remember in writing of travel: first, to make your journey clear and intelligible by following the time-order in your narration, and by recollecting all the important stages of the trip; and, second, to select for description the most interesting incidents or places which you saw, and to write of them as vividly and picturesquely as possible.
The roads were gay early next morning when we started, for it was market day, and the country people were flocking into town, some driving their pigs, some riding donkeys with calfskin saddles adorned with little red tassels; the women wearing high-crowned hats with bright handkerchiefs tied on underneath, and bright cotton shawls; the men with brown-and-white-striped blankets gracefully thrown over the shoulder, and in their hands long, brass-tipped staves. Most of the women had large gold earrings, and some of them, in addition, gold chains and crosses and filigree heart-shaped pendants. We met presently a troop of fishwomen running at full speed to catch the market, their baskets balanced on their heads. Their earrings were hoop-shaped, and their skirts short and tucked up, and they had embroidered purses hanging at the side. The fishermen we overtook a little later, going back toward the sea with their nets. All had time to touch their caps and say "Good day," for civility to strangers is the rule in Portugal. Here and there were children minding goats under the shade of the olives. No idlers, no beggars were to be seen. At noon we came to Alcobaça, and walked through the town to the great abbey church of the Cistercians. The market was going on outside it. Gayly dressed women presided over heaps of maize and oranges and eggs. Strings of donkeys were tied up by the wall. A scarlet-robed acolyte walked amongst the people collecting alms. A broad flight of steps led up to the great door. Inside all is very simple and grand—a vaulted roof, rows of slender columns, no pictures or tawdry decorations to be seen. Now and then, not very often, a woman would come in from the busy market place and kneel to say a silent prayer.... We visited the convent where Beckford had lived, and saw its great tiled kitchen and its beautiful cloisters, and then went back to the inn to lunch, where we enjoyed above all a liberal dish of green peas—green still in our memories.
We drove on through pleasant fields and vineyards, catching sight now and then of the distant sea, and, suddenly coming to an open space through the trees, we saw before us the great memorial church of Batalha, the Battle Abbey of Portugal, its pinnacles and the delicate lace work of its roof standing out against the clear blue sky. It stands quite alone, except for the handful of red-tiled houses that form the village, and from its roof you look down, not on the smoke and turmoil of human habitations, but on green fields and slopes and olive trees; and under its walls no troops of beggars, or pleasure seekers, or chattering merchants disturb the stillness. One only I saw there, sitting near the door under the shade of a bright-colored umbrella, a heap of pottery at her feet for sale, and a donkey tied up close by; but her child had fallen asleep in her arms, and she did not move or speak. Inside, also, all was quiet, and we could enjoy its beauty—the long aisles, the endless columns, the exquisite cloisters, where the fantastic and varied stone traceries contrast with the quaint formal garden with its box-edged beds, in which are set roses, and peonies, and columbines.... We learned that the church was founded in 1387 by the great King Joao soon after the fighting of the decisive victory which it commemorates, and that there is a doubt as to the architect employed, whether he was an Irishman named Hackett, or another. I am all for the Irishman, but hope he was not also responsible for the idea of laying the foundations in this hollow, where the water lies when the winter floods begin. We tried to find out, through Antonio, how high the water actually rises, but he would only wave his hands deferentially and say, as though he had been one of Canute's courtiers, "As high as you please, sir." That night we slept at Leiria. The inn is over a stable, and one room looks out on a piggery and another on a fowl yard.
We said farewell to our mules, and took the train again at Pombal, interesting chiefly from its association with the great eighteenth-century statesman of the same name. We look out from the railway carriage on level meadows, purple with vipers' bugloss, bordering the Mondego, and then across a bend of the river where it is broadest we see Coimbra, the Oxford of Portugal, an ancient and beautiful city, beautifully set on a hillside. Bare-headed, black-robed students fill the streets, and swarm in and out of the doors of the university. The streets are steep and narrow, and here and there are unexpected gardens and blossoming Judas trees.—Lady Gregory: Through Portugal.
Exercise 119.—Write, either in letter form or as a composition, an account of any journey you have taken. It is better to select a small part of a trip, and describe that quite completely, than to try to cover a long journey. A day's excursion, if it is interesting, is enough as a rule for one exercise, although this is by no means an invariable rule.
The following subjects are given as suitable for travel compositions, or as suggesting others:—
1. Our trip to the county fair. 2. The journey I took the first time I saw the ocean. 3. How we go away for the summer: packing up, leaving the house, the journey with pet animals, etc., arrival. 4. A trip that should have been very short, but was made long by an accident. 5. How we go fishing, hunting, studying birds. 6. The trip to the greatest natural curiosity I ever saw; a cave; hanging cliff; waterfall, etc.
73. Descriptions of an Hour.—When you write an account of a journey, you are telling all the interesting events that occurred in your life on a certain day or days, or in a certain number of hours. Now you do not need to travel to have interesting things happen to you, and a lively and picturesque account of your doings for an afternoon or a morning may be extremely readable, although perhaps you did not stir from one room. You will be quite surprised to see how many things you do, or any one else does, in a short space of time.
The following passage from David Copperfield is an account of how an underdone leg of mutton was made palatable after it had come to the table. No subject could be simpler, and yet it is treated in so lively a way that it is very entertaining.
There was a gridiron in the pantry, on which my morning rasher of bacon was cooked. We had it in, in a twinkling, and immediately applied ourselves to carrying Mr. Micawber's idea into effect. The division of labor to which he had referred was this: Traddles cut the mutton into slices; Mr. Micawber (who could do anything of this sort to perfection) covered them with pepper, mustard, salt, and cayenne; I put them on the gridiron, turned them with a fork, and took them off, under Mr. Micawber's direction; and Mrs. Micawber heated, and continually stirred, some mushroom ketchup in a little saucepan. When we had slices enough to begin upon, we fell to, with our sleeves still tucked up at the wrists, more slices sputtering and blazing on the fire, and our attention divided between the mutton on our plates, and the mutton then preparing.
What with the novelty of this cookery, the excellence of it, the bustle of it, the frequent starting up to look after it, the frequent sitting down to dispose of it as the crisp slices came off the gridiron hot and hot, the being so busy, so flushed with the fire, so amused, and in the midst of such a tempting noise and savor, we reduced the leg of mutton to the bone. My own appetite came back miraculously. I am ashamed to record it, but I really believe I forgot Dora for a little while. Traddles laughed heartily almost the whole time, as he ate and worked. Indeed we all did, all at once; and I dare say there never was a greater success.
We were at the height of our enjoyment, and were all busily engaged, in our several departments, endeavoring to bring the last batch of slices to a state of perfection that should crown the feast, when I was aware of a strange presence in the room, and my eyes encountered those of the staid Littimer, standing hat in hand before me.—Charles Dickens: David Copperfield.
Exercise 120.—I. Take a piece of paper and try to note down everything a baby of six or eight months does for a half an hour when he is wide awake and active. Or take similar notes of all that a two-year-old child does in an hour's play; or watch a kitten amuse itself, and try to write an account of it that will give your reader some idea of the gay frolics of the little animal. If you can find a colony of ants, their movements will give you good material for this sort of composition; or a pair of birds building a nest, or a crowd of little children playing.
II. In the same way, write on any of the following subjects:—
1. The story of a convalescent's afternoon. 2. The story of one day in house-cleaning time. 3. What we do on Sunday afternoon. 4. The first day at school after a vacation. 5. Our school picnic. 6. Two hours spent at a junction, waiting for a delayed train—how we amused ourselves. 7. The first time I ever rode horseback or tried to sail a boat. 8. The cook's last fifteen minutes before dinner is served. 9. An hour in a department store. 10. A visit to a flour mill, blacksmith shop, large bakery, candy factory, or any manufactory. 11. An afternoon spent just as I should like it best. 12. What a country boy does to amuse himself in two leisure hours; a city boy. 13. The hardest hour's work I ever did. 14. The hour on a farm spent in feeding the animals. 15. How we hurried to catch the morning train. 16. The half hour when I tried to amuse the baby.