A short passage. . . .

that i keep for inspiration. It is written on a notecard above my desk to remind me of what description is really supposed to be.

If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries-the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top -- ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold-the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong.
- - - Mark Twain

It is more familiar to cast Twain in the light of the "one quip wonder", but after reading this, I am again instilled with the fascination and awe of his words all over again.

Thanks! :)

Twain's ability to describe a scene and bring his reader into it is something that always leaves me wanting to emulate him. This is an artform that is perishing in this day of phone cams and email. We need to work to keep it from dying off.

He and Ayn Rand are my icons for descriptive writing. And you are correct, it does seem to be a dying art. That is one of the reasons that i spend a lot of my offline time mentoring young writers. i want to give them the kind of reverence for the written word that produces the kind of brilliance above.