The story-teller often pauses in his narrative of events to give his hearers bits of description, and all of us have frequent occasion to describe as accurately as possible something we wish to bring before a listener. If we could only open our eyes and see the wealth of material all about us, we should find ourselves continually enriching our conversation through descriptions. This is what Ruskin, in "Modern Painters," says:

The fact is, that there is hardly a roadside pond or pool which has not as much landscape in it as above it. It is not the brown, muddy, dull thing we suppose it to be; it has a heart like ourselves, and in the bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall trees, and the blades of the shaking grass, and all manner of hues, of variable, pleasant light out of the sky; nay, the ugly gutter, that stagnates over the drain bars, in the heart of the foul city, is not altogether base; down in that, if you will look deep enough, you may see the dark, serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing of pure clouds. It is at your own will that you see in that despised stream, either the refuse of the street, or the image of the sky - so it is with almost all other things that we unkindly despise.

It is not enough to tell what we have seen. Our object should be to paint a picture that shall affect our listener as the original observation affected us. To do this skillfully requires study and practice.

Many of the pictures we shall wish to paint will be based entirely on the imagination, as some of Jules Verne's are in "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea," and Coleridge's in "The Ancient Mariner:"