A (                                               ) handkerchief. 
A  (           ) red (                           ) handkerchief. 
A  (    ) dark  red  (                           ) handkerchief. 
A  very  dark   red  (                           ) handkerchief. 
A   very   dark   red  (   ) silk (              ) handkerchief. 
A   very   dark   red  raw  silk  (              ) handkerchief. 
A   very   dark   red   raw   silk  (      ) dress handkerchief. 
A   very   dark   red   raw   silk  lady’s  dress  handkerchief.

We might also observe that hand is an adjective, compounded by use with kerchief.  It is derived from the french word couvrir, to cover, and chef, the head.  It means a head dress, a cloth to cover, a neck cloth, a napkin.  By habit we apply it to a single article, and speak of neck handkerchief.

The nice shade of meaning, and the appropriate use of adjectives, is more distinctly marked in distinguishing colors than in any thing else, for the simple reason, that there is nothing in nature so closely observed.  For instance, take the word green, derived from grain, because it is grain color, or the color of the fair carpet of nature in spring and summer.  But this hue changes from the deep grass green, to the light olive, and words are chosen to express the thousand varying tints produced by as many different objects.  In the adaptation of language to the expression of ideas, we do not separate these shades of color from the things in which such colors are supposed to reside.  Hence we talk of grass, pea, olive, leek, verdigris, emerald, sea, and bottle green; also, of light, dark, medium; very light, or dark grass, pea, olive, or invisible green.

Red, as a word, means rayed.  It describes the appearance or substance produced when rayed, reddened, or radiated by the morning beams of the sun, or any other radiating cause.

Wh is used for qu, in white, which means quite, quited, quitted, cleared, cleansed of all color, spot, or stain.

Blue is another spelling for blew.  Applied to color, it describes something in appearance to the sky, when the clouds and mists are blown away, and the clear blue ether appears.

You will be pleased with the following extract from an eloquent writer of the last century,[9] who, tho somewhat extravagant in some of his speculations, was, nevertheless, a close observer of nature, which he studied as it is, without the aid of human theories.  The beauty of the style, and the correctness of the sentiment, will be a sufficient apology for its length.

“We shall employ a method, not quite so learned, to convey an idea of the generation of colors, and the decomposition of the solar ray.  Instead of examining them in a prism of glass, we shall consider them in the heavens, and there we shall behold the five primordial colours unfold themselves in the order which we have indicated.