Down nearer the
water, and not far from the castle that was once a playhouse and is now
the depot of emigration, stood certain express wagons, and about these
lounged a few hard-looking men. Beyond laughed and danced the fresh blue
water of the bay, dotted with sails and smokestacks.
--Howells: _Their Wedding Journey_.
The successive images of the preceding selection are clear enough, but
they are bound together by a common purpose, which is the creation of a
single impression. Often, however, a description may present, not a single
impression, but a series of such impressions, to which a unity is given by
the fact that they are all connected with one event, or occur at the same
time, or in the same place. Such a series of impressions is illustrated in
the following:--
It is a phenomenon whose commonness alone prevents it from being most
impressive, that departure of the night-express. The two hundred miles it
is to travel stretch before it, traced by those slender clews, to lose
which is ruin, and about which hang so many dangers. The drawbridges that
gape upon the way, the trains that stand smoking and steaming on the
track, the rail that has borne the wear so long that it must soon snap
under it, the deep cut where the overhanging mass of rocks trembles to its
fall, the obstruction that a pitiless malice may have placed in your path,
you think of these after the journey is done, but they seldom haunt
your fancy while it lasts.
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