"Learn to see and to hear. Seeing and hearing are more matters of the brain than of eye and ear. . . . Exposition demands . . . the exercise of reason as well as of observation, but the two are closely bound together; and the mind which is trained to see is as sure to reason about what it sees as the plant which thrusts its rootlets into the rich soil is to grow."

- Arlo Bates.

168. The Meaning Of Exposition

Every person who knows how to sail a boat enjoys telling how he does it. A good swimmer likes to let a beginner into the secret of his skill. The tennis player sometimes tries to give his friends some notion of what he means by "thirty-love." In each of these cases there is a demand for explanation, or, as we sometimes call it, exposition.

You may know how the town in which you live came to have a high-school building. If you were to give this history, you would call your work narration. Should you by the use of words make a picture of the schoolhouse, you would produce a description. But if you explain the uses of the building, the result is an exposition.

In describing a thing we tell of its appearance; in explaining it we expose, or "set forth," its meaning. One who has attended a typical "town meeting" can give an entertaining account of what he saw there, but it is another matter to make a foreigner comprehend what "town meeting" really means. It is one thing to describe a friend so that a stranger can pick him out in a crowd; it is a very different undertaking to explain the secret of your friend's cheerful countenance.

In reading a biography we are not satisfied with a description of a man's appearance; we wish to know what sort of man he was. We turn year after year to Lockhart's "Life of Scott," Southey's "Life of Nelson," and Plutarch's "Lives," because these enable us to understand how certain great men accomplished their life work.