CHAPTER IV

A BRIEF TRIAL REVIEW OF GRAMMAR

Why We Should Study Grammar. A knowledge of English Grammar is absolutely essential to any one who wishes to be intelligent, successful, and respected. We can forgive ignorance on many subjects, but ignorance of grammar is unpardonable in these days of free schools and of inexpensive textbooks. If a business man sends out letters that are ungrammatical he is soon suspected of not being in the first class, and he is likely to lose customers. If a woman sends out ungrammatical invitations to guests, she is stamped at once as socially "impossible." No matter whether you are speaking or writing there will not be a day in your life when you will not be judged by the kind of grammar you employ. Grammar is not a subject to be forgotten as soon as you leave the grammar school. You must be in constant practice. The study of grammar is good training for the mind, and everybody knows the value of training in any sport or in any work. From this study one learns to be accurate in details, to see fine relationships, and to think closely and clearly. The pupils who excel in classes in grammar do so

not because of sheer good luck but because they think.

How to Review Grammar. Having left childhood behind you in the grammar school, you must now recognize your responsibilities in life and try to help in your own education. Find out what your own difficulties are, discover what parts of grammar you know best and what you have forgotten, and try to review at home the points where you are especially weak. Remember that it is unfair and childish to make your teacher do all the work. Have initiative, recognize your defects, and overcome them.

EXERCISE

Each student in class should read aloud in turn one sentence from the following extract, and state whether that sentence is simple, complex, or compound; declarative, exclamatory, or interrogative.

They could still hear the music, faint and far away; perhaps the girls were dancing again, and not weeping for poor Jack, the sailor; but as the men pulled at their oars, light in the channel's flow, and looked back at the bright-house, they saw a fire shining on the shore at Hamilton's. Word had been passed that the captain was going down; the crowd had gathered again; they were cheering like mad, and the boys in the boat yelled themselves hoarse, while some one drifting in a skiff near by fired a heavy pistol, which roused all the river birds and echoed in the river pines from shore to shore. Huzza! they were bringing refuse from the shipyard, now, and piling it on the flame! The bonfire towered high, and lighted the

shipping and the reefed sails of the gundalows. The steep roof of the house with its high dormer windows, the leafless elms, were all like glowing gold against the blue height of the sky. The eagles waked, and flew crying above the river in the strange light. Somebody was swinging a lantern from the roof of Hamilton house, and then there came a light to an upper window that had been dark before, and another, and another, till all the great house was lit and seemed to tower into the skies. The boat's crew leaned upon their oars, drifting and losing way as they tried to shout back. It cheered their brave hearts, and sent them gayly on their dark journey; a moment before they had thought heavily that some could play and dance ashore while others must go off into the night, leaving all but the thought of Glory behind them. SARAH ORNE JEWETT: The Tory Lover.

EXERCISE

Copy in a column at the left hand side of your paper all the verb forms in the extract above, then at the right hand state the tense, mood, and voice of each. If you are in doubt about forms consult the appendix of this book, p. 602.

EXERCISE

The Parts of Speech

Taking up the words, one by one, of the following extract, each pupil should, in turn, state what part of speech the word which falls to his or her lot is.

One day, about ten miles from one of our Hudson River cities, there got into the train six young women loaded

down with vast sheaves and bundles of trailing arbutus. Each one of them had enough for forty. They had apparently made a clean sweep of the woods. It was a pretty sight, -the pink and white of the girls and the pink and white of the flowers! And the car, too, was suddenly filled with perfume, the breath of spring loaded the air; but I thought it a pity to ravish the woods in that way. The next party was probably equally greedy, and because a handful was desirable, thought an armful proportionately so; till, by and by, the flower will be driven from those woods.

JOHN BURROUGHS: Riverby.

EXERCISE

Copy the following extract, underlining every adjective. On a fresh sheet of paper make a list of the adjectives, in a column, and state after each in what class it belongs. Consult the appendix, p. 583.

In the great Central Valley of California there are only two seasons, - spring and summer. The spring begins with the first rainstorm, which usually falls in November. In a few months the wonderful flowery vegetation is in full bloom, and by the end of May it is dead and dry and crisp, as if every plant had been roasted in an oven.

Then the lolling, panting flocks and herds are driven to the high, cool, green pastures of the Sierra. I was longing for the mountains about this time, but money was scarce and I couldn't see how a bread supply was to be kept up. While I was anxiously brooding on the bread problem, so troublesome to wanderers, and trying to believe that I might learn to live like the wild animals, gleaning nourishment here and there from seeds, berries, and so forth, sauntering and climbing in joyful independence of money or baggage, Mr. Delaney, a sheep-owner,

for whom I had worked a few weeks, called on me, and offered to engage me to go with his shepherd and flock to the headwaters of the Merced and Tuolumne rivers, — the very region I had in mind.

JOHN MUIR: My First Summer in the Sierra.

EXERCISE

State what part of speech each italicized word in the following extract is.

From a geological point of view it is only in recent ages that the British Isles have been separated by water from the continent of Europe. The ancient edge of the continent lay far to the westward of the present coast, and the seas around Great Britain and Ireland are comparatively shallow waters which have in a late geological period overspread the lower-lying islands. The earliest inhabitants of Britain came in all probability by land, not by water. It is scarcely more than an accident that the coasts of France, Belgium, and Holland are separated from those of England by a shallow sea rather than by a level plain. Both coasts are comparatively low and provided with numerous harbors. Hence the countries on the two sides of the narrow seas have always been easily accessible to one another. They are natural neighbors, much alike in the character of their coast, surface, productions, and even population.

EDWARD P. CHEYNEY: A Short History of England.

EXERCISE

Analyze the sentences in the following extract.

In the middle of the night, as indeed each time that we lay on the shore of a lake, we heard the voice of the loon, loud and distinct, from far over the lake. It is a very wild sound, quite in keeping with the place and