Note the freshness and effectiveness of the following description from the opening of O. Henry’s story, “The Harbinger.”

Long before the springtide is felt in the dull bosom of the yokel does the city man know that the grass-green goddess is upon her throne.  He sits at his breakfast eggs and toast, begirt by stone walls, opens his morning paper and sees journalism leave vernalism at the post.

    For whereas Spring’s couriers were once the evidence of our
    finer senses, now the Associated Press does the trick.

The warble of the first robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along the main street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the blue bird, the swan song of the blue point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N.J., the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt of the Drug Trust to boost the price of quinine foiled in the House by Congressman Jinks, the first tall poplar struck by lightning and the usual stunned picknickers who had taken refuge, the first crack of the ice jamb in the Allegheny River, the finding of a violet in its mossy bed by the correspondent at Round Corners—­these are the advanced signs of the burgeoning season that are wired into the wise city, while the farmer sees nothing but winter upon his dreary fields.

But these be mere externals.  The true harbinger is the heart.  When Strephon seeks his Chloe and Mike his Maggie, then only is Spring arrived and the newspaper report of the five foot rattler killed in Squire Pettregrew’s pasture confirmed.

A hackneyed writer would probably have said that the newspaper told the city man about spring before the farmer could see any evidence of it, but that the real harbinger of spring was love and that “In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

2.  Imaging in Speech-Delivery

When once the passion of speech is on you and you are “warmed up”—­perhaps by striking till the iron is hot so that you may not fail to strike when it is hot—­your mood will be one of vision.

Then (a) Re-image past emotion—­of which more elsewhere.  The actor re-calls the old feelings every time he renders his telling lines.

(b) Reconstruct in image the scenes you are to describe.

(c) Image the objects in nature whose tone you are delineating, so that bearing and voice and movement (gesture) will picture forth the whole convincingly.  Instead of merely stating the fact that whiskey ruins homes, the temperance speaker paints a drunkard coming home to abuse his wife and strike his children.  It is much more effective than telling the truth in abstract terms.  To depict the cruelness of war, do not assert the fact abstractly—­“War is cruel.”  Show the soldier, an arm swept away by a bursting shell, lying on the battlefield pleading for water; show the children with tear-stained faces pressed against the window pane praying for their dead father to return.  Avoid general and prosaic terms.  Paint pictures.  Evolve images for the imagination of your audience to construct into pictures of their own.