ing us know something
very definite in the man.

"I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to
the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a
handbarrow, a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his hands
ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the saber cut
across one cheek, a lurid white."

=5.= Rossetti in "The Bride's Prelude," a story in verse, after merely
glancing at the opening of the tale, devotes eight stanzas to
description introduced for the purpose of background and atmosphere. Two
of them are given here.

"Within the window's heaped recess
The light was counterchanged
In blent reflexes manifold
From perfume caskets of wrought gold
And gems the bride's hair could not hold

"All thrust together: and with these
A slim-curved lute, which now,
At Amelotte's sudden passing there,
Was swept in some wise unaware,
And shook to music the close air."

This helps us to enter into the life and spirit of the time and place,
to conceive imaginatively the likings, the desires, the passions, the
purposes, and the powers that shall be potent in the story.

=6. Kinds of Description.=--Description is primarily of two kinds, that
which is to give accurate information, and that which is to produce a
definite impression not necessarily involving exactness of imagery. The
first of these forms is useful simply in the way of explanation, serving
the first purpose indicated in paragraph four. The second is useful for
other purposes than that of exposition, often appealing incidentally to
our sense of the beautiful, and requiring always nice literary skill in
its management. It should be borne in mind always that literary
description must not usurp the office of representations of the material
in the plastic arts. It should not be employed as an end in itself, but
only as subsidiary to other ends.

=7. Various Moods as Incidents.=--The moods in the characters of a story
and their changes are connected with the incidents of the story, since
they are in part happenings, and with the characters, since they reveal
character. Apart from direct statement of them, we understand the moods
of the actors in the little drama which we are made to imagine is being
played before us from the things they say, from the things they do, and
from gestures, attitudes, movements, which the author visualizes for us.
If these moods are not mad