_Note._—A story may or may not be true, but it must be pleasing. All the incidents of the story should lead up to a final event.
Composition that presents a picture of an object or a place is called =description=.
The three classes of objects that we most frequently desire to describe are (1) material objects, as buildings, (2) natural scenery, and (3) persons.
1. A general plan of the whole should be included with the enumeration of the parts. The form and magnitude of objects often furnish this plan.
2. The object or scene should be described from the most favorable point of view.
3. The most striking and interesting features should be selected and arranged so that they will easily combine into a whole. _Aim to give the reader a distinct and vivid picture of the subject._
As soon as you get inside the belt of wood, and begin to go down to the pond, the damp, and the dusk, and the scent of the dead leaves make you feel as if you were in a very old church. Plenty of wake-robin also grows in the wood, with its leaves like spotted spearheads, and its stumpy red and purple pencils wrapped up in faded green satin (“lords and ladies,” I think we used to call them when I was a youngster). The sweet flag grows all about the pond, and in it too. The corn-flag brightens up its banks with great yellow flowers; and the iris nods its purple blossoms on them, looking a great deal nicer than it smells. Big tangled sheaves of bright green forget-me-not, dotted with tiny stars of blue and gold, bulge over and into, and straggle along, the water. A great part of the pond is choked and carpeted with crow-silk and water-flannel, and moor-ball, spangled with glassy air-bubbles and bright-backed little beetles. White water-lilies, and yellow water-lilies spread a splendid service of china and gold on glossy green table-cloths, for the water-fairies to take supper off by moonlight; and yet, for all that, the great pond is a melancholy place. Big fish mope motionless in its corners, as if they had something on their minds. Little fish leap through its duck-weed, almost covered with the green scum, not as if they did it for the fun of the jump and splash, but to keep for a moment out of the jaws of the shark-like pike that is waiting for them. The pond’s great pike—it has only one, according to village report—is said to have dragged into its waters a dog that came to lap them. No one ever bathes in the pond. Steel-blue dragon-flies zig-zag over the water on their gauzy wings, and two or three kingfishers flash backwards and forwards across it like streaks of variegated lightning.—_Anon._
