r the desert outside
the city singing, 'Now I lay me down to sleep,' and
everything is dark till the moon rises."

Note how every detail introduced serves to make the city dead. Dead
kings, a wee gray squirrel, a little black monkey, a bristly wild
boar, the night wind, and the desert singing,--these could not be seen
or heard in a live city with street cars; but all serve to emphasize
the fact that here is "a big, red, dead city."

At the risk of over-emphasizing this point that the purpose of the
author, the mental point of view of the writer, the feeling which the
object gives him and which he wishes to convey to the reader, the
central thought in the description, is primary, and an element that
cannot be overlooked in successful description, I give another
example. This point really cannot be over-emphasized: a writer cannot
be too careful in selecting materials. Careless grouping of
incongruous matters cannot make a picture. Nor does the artistic
author leave the reader in doubt as to the purpose of the description;
its central thought is usually suggested in the first sentence. In the
quotations from Shakespeare and Kipling, the opening sentences are the
germ of what follows. Each detail seems to grow out of this sentence,
and serves to emphasize it. In the following by Stevenson, the
paragraphs spring from the opening sentence; they explain it, they
elaborate it, and they accent it.

"Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the
open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and
perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of
Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked
between walls and curtains is only a light and living
slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can
hear Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes
her rest she turns and smiles; and there is one stirring
hour unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful
influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all
the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that the
first cock crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but
like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of the night.
Cattle awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast on the
dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair among the ferns;
and houseless men, who have lain down with the fowls, open
their dim e