mney. The many lattices, with their small, diamond-shaped panes,
admitted the sunlight into hall and chamber, while, nevertheless, the
second story, projecting far over the base, and itself retiring beneath
the third, threw a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms.
Carved globes of wood were affixed under the jutting stories. Little
spiral rods of iron beautified each of the seven peaks. On the triangular
portion of the gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up
that very morning, and on which the sun was still marking the passage of
the first bright hour in a history that was not destined to be all so
bright. All around were scattered shavings, chips, shingles, and broken
halves of bricks; these, together with the lately turned earth, on which
the grass had not begun to grow, contributed to the impression of
strangeness and novelty proper to a house that had yet its place to make
among men's daily interests.

EXERCISES

_A._ Select the sentence or part of a sentence which gives the fundamental
image in each of the following selections:--

1. It was a big, smooth-stone-faced house, product of the 'Seventies,
frowning under an outrageously insistent Mansard, capped by a cupola, and
staring out of long windows overtopped with "ornamental" slabs. Two
cast-iron deer, painted death-gray, twins of the same mold, stood on
opposite sides of the front walk, their backs toward it and each other,
their bodies in profile to the street, their necks bent, however, so that
they gazed upon the passer-by--yet gazed without emotion. Two large, calm
dogs guarded the top of the steps leading to the front door; they also
were twins and of the same interesting metal, though honored beyond the
deer by coats of black paint and shellac.

--Booth Tarkington: _The Conquest of Canaan_ ("Harper's").

2. At the first glance, Phoebe saw an elderly personage, in an
old-fashioned dressing gown of faded damask, and wearing his gray or
almost white hair of an unusual length. It quite overshadowed his
forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared vaguely about the
room. After a very brief inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive
that his footstep must necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly,
and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first journey across a floor,
had just brought him hitherward. Yet there were no tokens that his
physical strength might not have sufficed for a free and determined gait