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substantial smile," our minds complete the picture so deftly begun--a much more effective process than that
of a minutely 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," "laughter-loving," are now conventional
compounds, but they were fresh enough when Homer first conjoined them. The centuries have not yet
improved upon "Wheels round, brazen, eight-spoked," or "Shields smooth, beautiful, brazen,
well-hammered." Observe the effective use of epithet in Will Levington Comfort's "The Fighting Death,"
when he speaks of soldiers in a Philippine skirmish as being "leeched against a rock."
Description uses figures of speech. Any advanced rhetoric will discuss their forms and give examples for
guidance.[21] This matter is most important, be assured. A brilliant yet carefully restrained figurative style, a
style marked by brief, pungent, witty, and humorous comparisons and characterizations, is a wonderful
resource for all kinds of platform work.
Description may be direct. This statement is plain enough without exposition. Use your own judgment as to
whether in picturing you had better proceed from a general view to the details, or first give the details and thus
build up the general picture, but by all means BE BRIEF.
Note the vivid compactness of these delineations from Washington Irving's "Knickerbocker:"
He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double
chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was
supposed in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the
constant neighborhood of his tobacco pipe.
"1_1_21">CHAPTER XX. INFLUENCING BY DESCRIPTION 123
The Art of Public Speaking
He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five
inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of
such stupendous dimensions, that Dame Nature, with all her sex's
ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable
of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and
settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the
shoulders. His body was of an oblong form, particularly
capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence,
seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to
the idle labor of walking.
The foregoing is too long for the platform, but it is so good-humored, so full of delightful exaggeration, that it
may well serve as a model of humorous character picturing, for here one inevitably sees the inner man in the
outer.
Direct description for platform use may be made vivid by the sparing use of the "historical present." The
following dramatic passage, accompanied by the most lively action, has lingered in the mind for thirty years
after hearing Dr. T. De Witt Talmage lecture on "Big Blunders." The crack of the bat sounds clear even today:
Get ready the bats and take your positions. Now, give us the
ball. Too low. Don't strike. Too high. Don't strike. There it
comes like lightning. Strike! Away it soars! Higher! Higher!
Run! Another base! Faster! Faster! Good! All around at one
stroke!
Observe the remarkable way in which the lecturer fused speaker, audience, spectators, and players into one
excited, ecstatic whole--just as you have found yourself starting forward in your seat at the delivery of the
ball with "three on and two down" in the ninth inning. Notice, too, how--perhaps unconsciously--Talmage
painted the scene in Homer's characteristic style: not as having already happened, but as happening before
your eyes.
If you have attended many travel talks you must have been impressed by the painful extremes to which the
lecturers go--with a few notable exceptions, their language is either over-ornate or crude. If you would learn
the power of words to make scenery, yes, even houses, palpitate with poetry and human appeal, read Lafcadio
Hearn, Robert Louis Stevenson, Pierre Loti, and Edmondo De Amicis.
Blue-distant, a mountain of carven stone appeared before
them,--the Temple, lifting to heaven its wilderness of chiseled
pinnacles, flinging to the sky the golden spray of its
decoration.
--LAFCADIO HEARN, Chinese Ghosts.
The stars were clear, colored, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A
faint silvery vapour stood for the Milky Way. All around me the
black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]