A Guide to Picturing in Speech

This is the image-making faculty. The ability to call to mind vivid and varied pictures, appropriate to the thought, is a powerful element in good speaking. What the speaker sees in his imagination is likely to be shared by his auditors. This is well described by Dr. Conwell when he says:

"Oh! The power of words! With them we sway men's minds at will. Let me call your attention to the sea. The Sea! Close your eyes and look at it as you saw it last summer. Think of its waves away, away out yonder-see that ripple of white running along on the crest of the nearer one-see it now as it sheens and advances in wreaths of delicate foam almost to your feet, and then rolls playfully back in beautiful sheets to be lost in the next incoming tide. See the old mast out there and the sails that dot the horizon. You see them all now! Why? Words - only words!"

To test what you really saw in reading the foregoing, answer questions like the following: Did you see the sea? What color was it? How high were the waves? Was there any breeze? Was it day or night? Did you see any boats? How many? Sailboats or otherwise? How far away were they? Where were you?

"Home! Now you think of your old homestead. Let me go through it with you as you roam about the dear old familiar scenes. Tell me where your mother sat and where your father used to read the paper. Show me the place where your sister played and where you studied in those dear old days. You see it all again! Why? I have uttered one word. A word-only a word!"

Did you see the old home? "Was it indoors? Describe it. Did you see your mother? Describe her. Describe your father and sister. What more did you see?

The image-making faculty can be surprisingly developed by such aids as endeavouring to see pictures of what one reads, to describe it orally to another, to write about it in one's own words. The aim should be to secure vivid impressions. For practise write from memory a description of a storm, a landscape, a battle, the sky at night, a fire.

EXAMPLES

1. Old Wardle led the way to a pretty large sheet of ice; and, the fat boy and Mr. Weller having shovelled and swept away the snow which had fallen on it during the night, Mr. Bob Sawyer adjusted his skates with a dexterity which to Mr. Winkle was perfectly marvellous, and described circles with his left leg, and cut figures of eight, and inscribed upon the ice, without once stopping for breath, a great many other pleasant and astonishing devices, to the excessive satisfaction of Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Tupman, and the ladies; which reached a pitch of positive enthusiasm when old Wardle and Benjamin Allen, assisted by the aforesaid Bob Sawyer, performed some mystic evolutions which they called a reel.

"Pickwick Papers." DICKENS.

2. I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston ; and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Everything around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night-the sky was without a cloud-the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral lustre but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east. . . . Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of dawn.

EDWARD EVERETT.

3. The circumstances now clearly in evidence spread out the whole scene before us. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet; the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half-lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this, he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges without noise; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him. The room is uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper is turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, show him where to strike. The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he plies the dagger, though it is obvious that life has been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard. To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes.

"The White Murder Case." WEBSTER.