you can, read your notes. Do they add anything to your
picture?

4. Make a list of the things on some desk that you cannot see but with
which you are familiar; for example, the teacher's desk. At the first
opportunity notice how accurate your list is.

5. Look for some time at the stained glass windows of a church or at the
wall paper of the room. What patterns do you notice that you did not see
at first? What colors?

6. Make a list of the objects visible from your bedroom window. When you
go home notice what you have omitted.

7. Practice observation contests similar to the following: Let two or more
persons pass a store window. Each shall then make a list of what the
window contains. Compare lists with one another.

+Theme LIV.+--_Write a description of some dwelling._

(Select a house that you can see on the way home. Choose a point of view
and notice carefully what can be seen from it. When you are ready to
write, form as vivid a mental picture of the house as you can. Write the
sentence that gives the fundamental image. Add such of the details as will
enable the reader to form an accurate image.)

+127. Selection of Essential Details.+--After deciding upon a point of
view and such general characteristics as are essential to the forming of a
correct outline of the object to be described, we must next give our
attention to the selection of the details. If our description has been
properly begun, this general outline will not be changed, but each
succeeding phrase or sentence will add to the clearness and distinctness
of the picture. Our first impression of a house may include windows, but
the mention of them later will bring them out clearly on our mental
picture much as the details appear when one is developing a negative in
photography.

If the peculiarities of an object are such as to effect its general form,
they need to be stated in the opening sentence; but when the peculiar or
distinguishing characteristic does not affect the form, it may be
introduced later. If we say, "On the corner across the street from the
post office there is a large, two-story, red brick store," the reader can
form at once a general picture of such a store. Only those things which
give a general outline have been included. As yet nothing has been
mentioned to distinguish the store from any other similar one. If some
following sentence should be, "Though not wider, it yet presents a more
imposing appearance than its neighb