Nothing is of greater importance than the choosing of significant details. That choice made, your problem is one of arrangement.

In the following lines, note the choice of significant details and the skillful management of them:

For cups and silver on the burnish'd board Sparkled and shone; so genial was the hearth: And on the right hand of the hearth he saw Philip, the slighted suitor of old times, Stout, rosy, with his babe across his knees; And o'er her second father stoopt a girl, A later but a loftier Annie Lee, Fair-hair'd and tall, and from her lifted hand Dangled a length of ribbon and a ring To tempt the babe, who rear'd his creasy arms, Caught at and ever miss'd it, and they laugh'd: And on the left hand of the hearth he saw The mother glancing often toward her babe, But turning now and then to speak with him, Her son, who stood beside her tall and strong, And saying that which pleased him, for he smiled.

- Tennyson, "Enoch Arden."

Sometimes a writer makes clear at the start the manner in which he proposes to develop the description. Victor Hugo, in describing the field of Waterloo, says:

Those who would get a clear idea of the battle of Waterloo have only to lay down upon the ground in their mind a capital A. The left stroke of the A is the road from Nivelles, the right stroke is the road from Genappe, the cross of the A is the sunken road from Ohain to Braine I'Alleud.

Newman's description of Attica begins:

A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and thirty its greatest breadth.

It is a help to clearness to say that a church takes the form of a cross or of an amphitheater. You may know of a peninsula that might be likened to a finger, of a road that resembles an S, of a river that may be compared to a horseshoe or an oxbow.

Exercise

531. With the foregoing illustrations in mind, write a description of some view that has made a deep impression on you. Choose important details.