number of illustrations will show that we first see
the general outline, and after that the details. We do not observe the
details one by one and then combine them into an object, but we first see
the object as a whole, and our first impression becomes more vivid as we
add detail after detail.

Following this natural order of observation a description should begin
with a sentence that will give the reader a general impression of the
whole. Notice the beginnings of the following selections. After reading
the italicized sentence in each, consider the image that it has caused you
to form.

The door opened upon the main or living room. _It was a long apartment
with low ceiling and walls of hewn logs chinked and plastered and all
beautifully whitewashed and clean._ The tables, chairs, and benches were
all homemade. On the floor were magnificent skins of wolf, bear, musk ox,
and mountain goat. The walls were decorated with heads and horns of deer
and mountain sheep, eagle's wings, and a beautiful breast of a loon, which
Gwen had shot and of which she was very proud. At one end of the room a
huge stone fireplace stood radiant in its summer decorations of ferns and
grasses and wildflowers. At the other end a door opened into another room,
smaller, and richly furnished with relics of former grandeur.

--Connor: _The Sky Pilot_.

_The stranger was of middle height, loosely knit and thin, with a cunning,
brutal face._ He had a bullet-shaped head, with fine, soft, reddish brown
hair; a round, stubbly beard shot with gray; and small, beady eyes set
close together. He was clothed in an old, black, grotesquely fitting
cutaway coat, with coarse trousers tucked into his boot tops. A worn
visored cloth cap was on his head. In his right hand he carried an old
muzzle-loading shotgun.

--George Kibbe Turner: _Across the State_ ("McClure's").

+120. The Fundamental Image.+--The first impression of the object as a
whole is called the fundamental image. The beginning of a description
should cause the reader to form a correct general outline, which will
include the main characteristics of the object described. While the
fundamental image lacks definiteness and exactness, yet it must be such
that it shall not need to be revised as we add the details. If one should
begin a description by saying, "Opposite the church there is a large
two-story, brick house with a conservatory on the left," the reader would
form at once a mental picture