Higher Lessons in English Part 16

_Jacob's favorite sons, Joseph and Benjamin, were Rachel's children_. The phrase _Joseph and Benjamin_ explains sons without restricting, and therefore should be set off by the comma.

In each of these expressions, _I myself, we boys, William the Conqueror_, the explanatory term combines closely with the word explained, and no comma is needed.

+Direction+.--_Give the reasons for the insertion or the omission of commas in these sentences_:--

1. My brother Henry and my brother George belong to a boat-club.

2. The author of Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan, was the son of a tinker.

3. Shakespeare, the great dramatist, was careless of his literary reputation.

4. The conqueror of Mexico, Cortez, was cruel in his treatment of Montezuma.

5. Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, was a Spaniard.

6. The Emperors Napoleon and Alexander met and became fast friends on a raft at Tilsit.

+Direction+.--_Insert commas below, where they are needed, and give your reasons_:--

1. The Franks a warlike people of Germany gave their name to France.

2. My son Joseph has entered college.

3. You blocks! You stones! 0 you hard hearts!

4. Mecca a city in Arabia is sacred in the eyes of Mohammedans.

5. He himself could not go.

6. The poet Spenser lived in the reign of Elizabeth.

7. Elizabeth Queen of England ruled from 1558 to 1603.

+Direction.+--_Compose sentences containing these expressions as explanatory modifiers_:--

The most useful metal; the capital of Turkey; the Imperial City; the great English poets; the hermit; a distinguished American statesman.

+Direction.+--_Punctuate these expressions, and employ each of them in a sentence_:--

See Remark, Lesson 21. Omit _or_, and note the effect.

1. Palestine or the Holy Land ----.

2. New York or the Empire State ----.

3. New Orleans or the Crescent City ----.

4. The five Books of Moses or the Pentateuch ----.

+Remember+ that (_'s_) and (_'_) are the possessive signs--(_'_) being used when _s_ has been added to denote more than one, and (_'s_) in other cases.

+Direction.+--_Copy the following, and note the use of the possessive sign_:--

The lady's fan; the girl's bonnet; a dollar's worth; Burns's poems; Brown & Co.'s business; a day's work; men's clothing; children's toys; those girls'

dresses; ladies' calls; three years' interest; five dollars' worth.

+Direction.+--_Make possessive modifiers of the following words, and join them to appropriate nouns_:--

Woman, women; mouse, mice; buffalo, buffaloes; fairy, fairies; hero, heroes; baby, babies; calf, calves.

+Caution.+--Do not use (_'s_) or (_'_) with the p.r.o.nouns _its, his, ours, yours, hers, theirs_.

LESSON 35.

NOUNS AS ADVERB MODIFIERS.

+Introductory Hints.+--_He gave me a book_. Here we have what many grammarians call a _double object_. _Book_, naming the thing acted upon, they call the _direct_ object; and _me_, naming the person toward whom the act is directed, they call the +indirect+, or _dative_, +object+.

You see that _me_ and _book_ do not, like _Cornwallis_ and _army_, in _Was.h.i.+ngton captured Cornwallis and his army_, form a compound object complement; they cannot be connected by a conjunction, for they do not stand in the same relation to the verb _gave_. The meaning is not, He gave me _and_ the book.

We treat these indirect objects, which generally denote the person to or for whom something is done, as equivalent to phrase modifiers. If we change the order of the words, a preposition must be supplied; as, He gave a book _to me_. He bought _me_ a _book_; He bought a book _for me_. He asked _me_ a _question_; He asked a _question of me_. When the indirect object precedes the direct, no preposition is expressed or understood.

_Teach, tell, send, promise, permit_, and _lend_ are other examples of verbs that take indirect objects.

Besides these indirect objects, +nouns denoting measure+, quant.i.ty, weight, time, value, distance, or direction are often used adverbially, being equivalent to phrase modifiers. We walked four _miles_ an _hour_; It weighs one _pound_; It is worth a _dollar_ a _yard_; I went _home_ that _way_; The wall is ten _feet_ six _inches_ high.

The idiom of the language does not often admit a preposition before nouns denoting measure, direction, etc. In your a.n.a.lysis you need not supply one.

+a.n.a.lysis.+

1. They offered Caesar the crown three times.

They | offered | crown ========|========================== | times the ------- three Caesar -----------

+Oral a.n.a.lysis.+--_Caesar_ and _times_ are nouns used adverbially, being equivalent to adverb phrases modifying the predicate _offered_.

2. We pay the President of the United States $50,000 a year.

3. He sent his daughter home that way.

4. I gave him a dollar a bushel for his wheat, and ten cents a pound for his sugar.

5. Shakespeare was fifty-two years old the very day of his death.

6. Serpents cast their skin once a year.

7. The famous Charter Oak of Hartford, Conn., fell Aug. 21, 1856.

8. Good land should yield its owner seventy-five bushels of corn an acre.

9. On the fatal field of Zutphen, Sept. 22, 1586, his attendants brought the wounded Sir Philip Sidney a cup of cold water.

10. He magnanimously gave a dying soldier the water.

11. The frog lives several weeks as a fish, and breathes by means of gills.

12. Queen Esther asked King Ahasuerus a favor.

13. Aristotle taught Alexander the Great philosophy.

14. The pure attar of roses is worth twenty or thirty dollars an ounce.

15. Puff-b.a.l.l.s have grown six inches in diameter in a single night.

LESSON 36.

REVIEW.

TO THE TEACHER.--See suggestions, Lesson 16.

+Direction.+--_Review from Lesson 28 to Lesson 35, inclusive_.