Its little viny stem creeps close to the ground, humble, faithful, and showing how the purest white may lay its cheek in the very dirt without soil or taint.
The odor of the arbutus is exquisite, and as delicate as the plant is modest. Some flowers seem determined to make an impression on you. They stare at you. They dazzle your eyes. If you smell them, they overfill your sense with their fragrance. They leave nothing for your gentleness and generosity, but do everything themselves.
But this sweet nestler of the spring hills is so secluded, half-covered with russet leaves, that you would not suspect its graces, did you not stoop to uncover the vine, to lift it up, and then you espy its secluded beauty.
If you smell it, at first it seems hardly to have an odor. But there steals out of it at length the finest, rarest scent, that rather cites desire than satisfies your sense. It is coy, without designing to be so, and its reserve plays upon the imagination far more than could a more positive way.
Without doubt there are intrinsic beauties in plants and flowers, and yet very much of pleasure depends upon their relations to the seasons, to the places where they grow, and to our own moods. No midsummer flower can produce the thrill that the earliest blossoms bring, which tell us that winter is gone, that growing days have come!—Henry Ward Beecher.
EXERCISE.
1. Are all the essential or cardinal qualities of style illustrated in the foregoing extract? By what means does the author secure each of the qualities found in this composition?
2. What other qualities of style do you find in this selection? Give examples of each.