8. Correct the following sentences, if necessary :

I. I asked her whether she would come again.

2. If he will come to-day, should you be willing to see him?

3. On receipt of this, you will immediately report at headquarters.

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4. Perchance I will be there as soon as you."

5. Were we writing for the English public, we would give it but a paragraph.

6. Whom shall the Democrats nominate? asks a daily paper.

7. "I will sooner have a beard grow on the palm of my hand than he shall get one on his cheek."

8. To-morrow we will offer for sale all of our stock of neckties at reduced rates.

9. I would like to go to town, and should do so if I could?

10. Should they not agree to the proposals, what would I do?

9. Write sentences in which each of the following words is employed followed by the preposition which it takes. In the cases of the words after which several prepositions are given, write sentences illustrating the proper use of the word with each of them.

10. Write sentences illustrating the correct use of the fol

CHAPTER X.

SOLECISMS.

62. Solecisms. The employment of expressions that violate the laws of English grammar is the most distinctive mark of the unlettered mind, and is therefore to be avoided with the greatest care. Such ungrammatical expressions, or errors in syntax, are technically known in rhetoric as solecisms. Theoretically the pupil who has come to the study of rhetoric may be supposed to have mastered the principles of syntax and to need no further drill in correct grammatical expression; practically we are all so much influenced by the careless speech of the day that we often fall into constructions that are not in accord

with the principles of English speech. "Grammar," says De Quincey, "is so little of a perfect attainment amongst us, that, with two or three exceptions, we have never seen the writer, through a circuit of prodigious reading, who has not sometimes violated the accidence of English grammar." It is well, therefore, to fix in the mind some of the specific and common errors, that we may be on our guard against them. "He don't," "you was," "I seen," are such crude mistakes that it seems almost unnecessary to caution

pupils against them, and yet just such solecisms are continually surprising us in the speech of those who should know better. It is possible to give here only a few of the more important instances of grammatical errors which occur in the speech or in the writing of the careless and the ignorant. Bearing in mind what the sentence is as it has been defined on page 86, the pupil should take care in his writing to be sure that every word has a definite grammatical relation in the

sentence.

63. Nouns and Pronouns.

Errors in the use of nouns and pronouns may be considered under two heads, errors of case and errors of number. As nouns in English have very little inflection, mistakes in the cases are not frequent; but as pronouns have retained their inflectional forms to a greater extent, the possibility of using them incorrectly is much greater.

In using the possessive case great care must be exercised in putting the apostrophe where it belongs. The possessive singular is formed by adding "'s" to the nominative; thus, "lady's," not "ladie's," "Dickens's," not "Dicken's." But a proper noun ending in "s" may, for the sake of euphony, take the apostrophe alone; thus, "Socrates'." The possessive plural is formed by adding the apostrophe to the nominative plural when the latter ends in "s," but otherwise it is formed like the possessive singular; thus, "boys'," "men's," "children's."

The possessive case of compound nouns and expres

sions used as compound nouns is formed by adding the proper sign of the possessive to the end of the compound; thus, "brother-in-law's," "William the Conqueror's." When we have two nouns in the possessive case, one in apposition with the other, the sign of the possessive is usually put with the second, but may be used with both; thus, "Go down to Smith the grocer's," or "Go down to Smith's the grocer's."

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In using the possessive form of such expressions as "somebody else" or "anybody else," we may say somebody's else" or "somebody else's,"" anybody's else," or anybody else's." The rules of grammar favor the first of the two forms, but good usage seems to have adopted the second.

If several nouns in the possessive case qualify the same noun, and are connected by and, the possessive sign may be used with the last one only; thus, Men, women, and children's shoes." But if common possession is not implied, or if the possessive words are joined by some disjunctive term, the possessive sign must be used with each word. Occasionally the sentence will be more elegant if possession is expressed by the use of the preposition 'of," and in some cases by both the preposition and the regular possessive case; thus, "How do you like that new house of John's?" The phrase "of John's" is a recognized English idiom.

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The possessive case must not be used as coextensive with the Latin genitive. As a general rule, the possessive case in English should denote ownership or possession, and should not be applied to inanimate objects. We may say "the boy's book," but not "the city's indebtedness, for the latter is a sort of personification of "the city," when no such personification is intended. In such cases it is better to use the objective case with " of.” We may

also say "the President's reception " when it is the President who receives, but if some one receives the President, we should say "the reception of the President; " that is, if a noun referring to a person be used subjec