od dog stories, such as _Bob, Son of Battle_, or
_The Call of the Wild_, will show how wide is the range of such words and
how much the description is enhanced by their careful use.

EXERCISE

Consider the following selections with reference to the choice of words
which add to the effectiveness of the descriptions:--

1. She was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny woman with big, rolling,
violet-blue eyes and the sweetest manners in the world.

2. The sounds and the straits and the sea with its plump, sleepy islands
lay north and east and south.

3. The mists of the Cuchullins are not fat, dull, and still, like lowland
and inland mists, but haggard, and streaming from the black peaks, and
full of gusty lines. We saw them first from the top of Beimna-Caillach, a
red, round-headed mountain hard by Bradford, in the isle of Skye.

Shortly after noon the rain came up from the sea and drew long delicate
gray lines against the cliffs. It came up licking and lisping over the
surface of Cornisk, and drove us to the lee of rocks and the shelter of
our ponchos, to watch the mists drifting, to listen to the swell and lull
of the wind and the patter of the cold rain. There were glimpses now and
then of the inner Cuchullins, a fragment of ragged sky line, the sudden
jab of a black pinnacle through the mist, the open mouth of a gorge
steaming with mist.

We climbed the great ridge, at length, of rock and wet heath that
separates Cornisk from Glen Sligachan, slowly through the fitful rain and
driving cloud, and saw Sgurr-nan-Gillian, sharp, black, and pitiless, the
northernmost peak and sentinel of the Cuchullins. The yellow trail could
be seen twisting along the flat, empty glen. Seven miles away was a white
spot, the Sligachan Hotel.

I think it must be the dreariest glen in Scotland. The trail twists in a
futile manner, and, after all, is mainly bog holes and rolling rocks. The
Red Hills are on the right, rusty, reddish, of the color of dried blood,
and gashed with sliding bowlders. Their heads seem beaten down, a Helot
population, and the Cuchullins stand back like an army of iron conquerors.
The Red Hills will be a vanished race one day, and the Cuchullins remain.

Arthur Colton: _The Mists o' Skye_ ("Harper's").

+132. Additional Aids to Effectiveness.+--Comparison and figures of speech
not only aid in making our picture clear and vivid, but they may add
a spice and flavor to our language, which counts for much i