Plain English Part 39

+201.+ +Do not say _says I_ or _thinks I_.+

Says I, "Will you go?"

Says he, "That's what will happen."

Thinks I to myself, "I'll show you."

These are incorrect. Say instead:

I said, "Will you go?"

He said, "That's what will happen."

I thought, "I'll show you."

Exercise 5

Mark all the verbs in the following quotations and note carefully their use.

1. Speak properly and in as few words as you can but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation but to be understood.--_Penn_.

2. "Freedom's battle, once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft, is ever won."

Note the use of _may_ and _can_ in this quotation:

3. Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away our cow, or take our pet lamb and leave us homeless and penniless; but he cannot lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of our minds.--_E. Burritt_.

Note the use of _shall_ and _will_ and _would_ and _should_ in the following. Richard Grant White says: "I do not know in English literature another pa.s.sage in which the distinction between _shall_ and _will_ and _would_ and _should_ is at once so elegantly, so variously, so precisely, and so compactly ill.u.s.trated."

4. "How long I shall love him I can no more tell, Than, had I a fever, when I should be well.

My pa.s.sion shall kill me before I will show it, And yet I would give all the world he did know it; But oh how I sigh, when I think, should he woo me, I cannot refuse what I know would undo me."

5. I want it said of me by those who know me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.--_Abraham Lincoln_.

Exercise 6

Note the nouns as well as the verbs in the following quotation. Note also the use of infinitives and participles. Mark every verb and use it in a sentence of your own.

+Faith and Truth+

You say "Believe;" I say "Trust."

Between those two words is a great gulf fixed.

The idea that there can be a moral obligation to believe external facts is unworthy of a freeman, but to trust is as much the true nature of man as it is that of a babe to draw in its mother's milk.

You say "Creed;" I say "Faith."

A creed at best is but a sorry caricature of a faith.

Faith is the proper atmosphere of man, trust is his native buoyancy, and his only obligation is to follow the highest law of his being.

You have one supreme duty above all creeds and conventions--namely, to think honestly, and say what you think.

Have you doubts about your creed? say so; only thus has the true faith ever advanced.

It is not G.o.d, but the devil, who whispers: "Think at your peril!"

Do you see flaws in the ancient structure of respectability and law and order? Say so; only thus has the condition of man ever improved.

Have courage to be the heretic and traitor that you are by nature, and do not worry about the consequences.

Be a creator, as you were born to be, and spurn beyond all infamies the wretched role of a repeater and apologist.

The world lives and grows by heresy and treason.

It dies by conformity to error and loyalty to wrong.

_Ernest Crosby_.

Exercise 7

In the following paragraph, the predicates are printed in italics, and the participles and infinitives in italic capitals. Study carefully.

If it _were taught_ to every child, and in every school and college, that it _is_ morally wrong for anyone _TO LIVE_ upon the _COMBINED_ labor of his fellowmen without _CONTRIBUTING_ an approximately equal amount of useful labor, whether physical or mental, in return, all kinds of _GAMBLING_, as well as many other kinds of useless occupations, _would be seen_ _TO BE_ of the same nature as direct dishonesty or fraud, and, therefore _would_ soon _come_ _TO BE CONSIDERED_ disgraceful as well as immoral.

_Alfred Russel Wallace_.

Exercise 8

Underscore all the verbs in the following and note the participles, the infinitives and the various time forms; also the helping verbs:

What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport of war? To my knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain 'natural enemies' of the French, there are selected, say thirty able-bodied men; Dumrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood and trained them in the crafts, so that one can weave, another build and another hammer. Nevertheless, amidst much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red and s.h.i.+pped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or, say only to the south of Spain, and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot in the south of Spain are thirty similar French artisans, in like manner, wending their ways; till at length the thirty stand facing the thirty, each with his gun in his hand. Straightway, the word 'Fire' is given, and they blow the souls out of one another; and in the place of the sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carca.s.ses, which it must bury and anew shed tears for.

Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the devil is, not the smallest!

They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them.

How then?

Simpleton! Their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one another, had these poor blockheads shoot.--_Carlyle_.

SPELLING

LESSON 11