Birds, Animals, and Insects.—See indexes of the following: Thoreau: Spring; Summer; Autumn; Winter; Walden. Burroughs: Wake Robin; Winter Sunshine; Birds and Bees. Miller: Bird-Ways; A Bird-Lover in the West. Torrey: A Rambler’s Lease; Birds in the Bush. Merriam: A-Birding on a Broncho. Bolles: From Blomidon to Smoky; The Land of the Lingering Snow; At the North of Bearcamp Water. Gibson: Sharp Eyes.
Buildings and Rooms.—Ruskin: Præterita, vol. i., 232 (chapel); vol. iii., 5 (monastery). Scott: Ivanhoe, iii. (Saxon hall). Stevenson: An Inland Voyage (Noyon Cathedral); The Amateur Emigrant (the second cabin). Hawthorne: House of the Seven Gables, i.; Howe’s Masquerade (the Province House). Irving: The Alhambra. (Palace of the Alhambra); Sketch Book (Westminster Abbey). Lamb: The East India Office.
Exposition
Helps: Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd, 14, 27, 32, 33, 40, 42, 54, 61, 72. Brevia, 5, 14, 15, 22, 37, 91, 92, 94, 105, 113, 115, 161, 163.
Blake: Thoreau’s Thoughts, 4, 9, 21, 46, 89, 98, 100, 103, 108, 118, 123.
Summary, Abstract, Abridgment.—The ability to arrive at the substance of an article or book and write it down, is demanded constantly in almost every business and in every profession. An extremely brief statement of the substance is called a summary. A longer statement, couched in language independent of that used by the author, is an abstract. If the article or book is shortened by the omission of the less important parts, the language of the original being in general retained, the result is an abridgment.
Almost any well-constructed composition lends itself to summary, abstract, or abridgment. A story of Irving or Hawthorne, a chapter of Parkman or John Fiske, an article in the Forum or the Nation, furnishes excellent material. Below are given typical pieces that may be used, the shorter ones for summary, the longer for abstract or abridgment. Stories can better be abstracted than abridged.
It is well to plan the proportions of your version. The scale of 1:6 (one paragraph to six) will be found a good proportion on which to reduce the longer pieces. Burke’s Speech On Conciliation would thus reduce to an abstract or an abridgment of about twenty paragraphs. But this speech can be reduced on a scale of 1:10 or even 1:20.