--Henry Van Dyke: _The Keeper of the Light_.
(Copyright, 1905. Charles Scribner's Sons.)
+125. Place of Point of View in Paragraph.+--The point of view may be
expressed or only implied or wholly omitted, but in any case the reader
must assume one in order to form a clear and accurate image. Beginners
will find that they can best cause their readers to form the desired
images by stating a point of view. When the point of view is stated it
must of necessity come early in the paragraph. We have already learned
that the beginning of a description should present the fundamental image.
For this reason the first sentence of a description frequently includes
both the point of view and the fundamental image.
EXERCISES
_A._ Consider the following selections with reference to--
(_a_) The point of view.
(_b_) The fundamental image.
(_c_) The completeness of the images which you have formed (see
Sections 26, 27).
1. The Lunardi [balloon], mounting through a stagnant calm in a line
almost vertical, had pierced the morning mists, and now swam emancipated
in a heaven of exquisite blue. Below us by some trick of eyesight, the
country had grown concave, its horizon curving up like the rim of a
shallow bowl--a bowl heaped, in point of fact, with sea fog, but to our
eyes with a froth delicate and dazzling as a whipped syllabub of snow.
Upon it the traveling shadow of the balloon became no shadow, but a stain;
an amethyst (you might call it) purged of all grosser properties than
color and lucency.
Pages:
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269