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
of the pack-saddle I could see Modestine walking round and round
at the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching
at the sward; but there was not another sound save the
indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones.

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, _Travels with a Donkey_.

It was full autumn now, late autumn--with the nightfalls gloomy,
and all things growing dark early in the old cottage, and all
the Breton land looking sombre, too. The very days seemed but
twilight; immeasurable clouds, slowly passing, would suddenly
bring darkness at broad noon. The wind moaned constantly--it was
like the sound of a great cathedral organ at a distance, but
playing profane airs, or despairing dirges; at other times it
would come close to the door, and lift up a howl like wild
beasts.

--PIERRE LOTI, _An Iceland Fisherman_.

I see the great refectory,[22] where a battalion might have
drilled; I see the long tables, the five hundred heads bent
above the plates, the rapid motion of five hundred forks, of a
thousand hands, and sixteen thousand teeth; the swarm of
servants running here and there, called to, scolded, hurried, on
every side at once; I hear the clatter of dishes, the deafening
noise, the voices choked with food crying out: "Bread--bread!"
and I fe