An oath in court provides that we shall "tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth," but, in forming images, it is not always
possible to hold our minds to such exactness. We are prone to picture more
or less than the words convey. In fact, in some forms of prose, and often
in poetry, the author purposely takes advantage of this habit of the mind
and wishes us to enlarge with creations of our own imagination the bare
image that his words convey. Such writing, however, aims to give pleasure
or to arouse our emotions. It calls out something in the reader even more
strongly than it sets forth something in the writer. This suggestiveness
in writing will be considered later, but for the present it will be well
for you to bear in mind that most language has for its purpose the exact
expression of a definite idea. Much of the failure in school work arises
from the careless substitution of one image for another, and from the
formation of incomplete and inaccurate images.


EXERCISES


_A._ Make a list of the words in the following selections whose meanings
you need to look up in order to make the images exact and complete. Do not
attempt to memorize the language of the definition, but to form a correct
image.


1. The sun stared brazenly down on a gray farmhouse, on ranges of
whitewashed outbuildings, and on a goodly array of dark-thatched ricks.

2. In his shabby frieze jacket and mud-laden brogans, he was scarcely an