and does nothing is not
only a waste of time, but is actually in the way. In a description
every word must count. It may be a comparison, an epithet,
personification, or what not, but whatever method is adopted, the
right word must do it quickly.

How much depends on the nice choice of words may be seen by a study of
the selections already quoted; and especially by a careful reading of
those by Stevenson and Everett. To show the use of adjectives and
nouns in description, the following from Kipling is a good
illustration. Toomai had just reached the elephants' "ball-room" when
he saw--

"white-tusked wild males, with fallen leaves and nuts and
twigs lying in the wrinkles of their necks and the folds of
their ears; fat, slow-footed she-elephants, with restless
pinky-black calves only three or four feet high, running
under their stomachs; young elephants with their tusks just
beginning to show, and very proud of them; lanky, scraggy,
old-maid elephants, with their hollow, anxious faces, and
trunks like rough bark; savage old bull-elephants, scarred
from shoulder to flank with great weals and cuts of by-gone
fights, and the caked dirt of their solitary mud bath
dropping from their shoulders; and there was one with a
broken tusk and the marks of the full-stroke, the terrible
drawing scrape of a tiger's claw on his side."[13]

One third of the words in this paragraph are descriptive nouns and
adjectives, none of which the reader wishes to change.

Use of Verbs.

Verbs also have a great value in description. In the paragraph
picturing the dawn, Stevenson has not neglected the verbs. "Welled,"
"whitened," "trembled," "brightened," "warmed," "kindled," and so on
through the paragraph. Try to change them, and it is apparent that
something is lost by any substitution. Kaa, the python, "_pours_
himself along the ground." If he is angry, "Baloo and Bagheera could
see the big swallowing-muscles on either side of Kaa's throat _ripple_
and _bulge._"

Yet in the choice of words, one may search for the bizarre and unusual
rather than for the truly picturesque. Stevenson at times seems to
have lapsed. When he says that Modestine would feel a switch "more
_tenderly_ than my cane;" that he "must _instantly_ maltreat this
uncomplaining animal," meaning constantly; and at another place that
he "had to labor so _consistently_ with" his stick that the sweat ran
into h