s new smock-frock, taking an uneasy siesta,
half-sitting, half-standing on the granary steps."

There is no obvious imaginative fitness in this passage, since in the
chapter where it occurs the chief characters are going to a funeral;
but it has an extraordinary verisimilitude, owing to the author's
accurate observation of the details of life in rural England.

=The Quality of Atmosphere, or Local Color.=--These two passages
differ very widely from each other. In one thing, and one only, are
they alike. Each of them exhibits the subtle quality called
"atmosphere." This quality is very difficult to define, though its
presence may be recognized instinctively in any work of graphic art,
like a painting or a description. Without attempting to define it, we
may discover the technical basis for its presence if we seek out the
sole deliberate device in which these two passages, different as they
are in every other feature, are at one. It will be noticed that in
each of them the details selected for presentation have been chosen
solely for the sake of a common quality inherent in them--the quality
of sombreness and gloom in the one case, and the quality of Sabbath
quietude in the other--and that they have been marshalled to convey a
complete sense of this central and pervading quality. It is commonly
supposed that what is called "atmosphere" in a description is
dependent upon the setting forth of a multiplicity of details; but
this popular conception is a fallacy. "Atmosphere" is dependent rather
upon a strict selection of details pervaded by a common quality, a
rigorous rejection of all others that are dissonant in mood, and an
arrangement of those selected with a view to exhibiting their common
quality as the pervading spirit of the scene.

This is obviously the technical basis for the "atmosphere" of a purely
imaginary setting like that of the melancholy House of Usher. The
effect is undeniably produced by the suppression of all details that
do not contribute to the central sense of gloom. But the same device
underlies (less obviously, to be sure) all such descriptions of actual
places as are rich in "atmosphere." What is called "local color"--the
very look and tone of a definite locality--is produced not by
photographic multiplicity of details, but by a marshalling of
materials carefully selected to suggest the central spirit of the
place to be depicted. The camera frequently defeats itself by flinging
into emphasis deta