48. As to early rising, which makes such a famous figure in some biographies, I can say little about it, as it is a virtue which I was never able to practise. Blackie.

49. My Lord of Hereford here, whom you call king, is a foul traitor. Shakspere.

50. Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Proverbs 27: 1.

51. Courage, whether moral or physical, is of three kinds courage to be, courage to do, courage to endure. W. T. Hewett.

52. Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. Webster.

53. 'Tis still observed those men most valiant are Who were most modest ere they came to war. 54. It is noble to be generous, but not at other people's expense.

55. The teacher wishes to know what you have in your brain, and you give him what you take from a piece of paper. Blackie.

56. The best part of a man is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness or of love. Wordsworth.

57. Newton was a great man without either telegraph, or gas, or steam-coach, or rubber shoes, or lucifer matches, or ether for his pain. Emerson.

58. He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. Emerson.

59. Let the thing in which you are most skilful be that about which you are most reticent. W. T. Hewett. 60. A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of

lies;

A lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright;

But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter

to fight. Tennyson

502. PRACTISE EXERCISE.

Show where

commas would help the reader. Some sentences need no comma.

1. When a friend asks there is no to-morrow. 2. Where ignorance is bliss 'twere folly to be wise. 3. Look where I point. 4. When no man is watching you be afraid of yourself. 5. Even if a donkey goes traveling he will not come home a horse. 6. If anything stay let work stay. 7. You'll be sorry if you do. 8. Since there's no use crying over spilt milk let us laugh and be merry. 9. He went until he dropped. 10. He ran as far as he could when he fell exhausted.

503. PRACTISE EXERCISE. Show where commas are really needed.

1. Joy temperance and repose slam the door on the doctor's nose. 2. Faith hope and charity are called the three christian graces. 3. Grant Lee and Stuart were generals. 4. Chicago Boston and New York are cities. 5. Foxes weasels and minks kill rabbits squirrels and birds. 6. Grace grit and gentian will cure the tobacco habit. 7. The tree was a large flourishing oak. 8. The man was a handsome burly Englishman. 9. There was the moon round bright and silvery. 10. He was a little old man. 11. What a pretty little watch. 12. The fox squirrel is a large red squirrel but it is not a large red-squirrel. 13. Sally was a fine young lady. 14. There was a foolish young lad named Simple Simon. 15. See that great big dog!

504. PRACTISE EXERCISE.

Show where

commas are really needed in the following sentences. Many sentences need none.

1. The king will probably come here to-day. 2. The king will come here to-day probably. 3. It may perhaps rain. 4. Can it possibly have been mislaid? 5. It may have been mislaid possibly. 6. It may possibly even probably have been mislaid. 7. Justice will sooner or later be done. 8. Surely the child was right. 9. The students however had not yet assembled. 10. A great steamer bearing down on the fishing boat sank it. 11. Crusoe looking saw canoes on the shore. 12. Caught in the sargasso sea the hulks of steamers lay drifting together. 13. Looking down you see a forest of wonderful plants growing in the sandy bottom. 14. Seen through the vapor the moon seemed strangely large. 15. There are in the sky about four thousand visible stars. 16. There are in the sky about four thousand stars visible to the naked eye. 17. A bow long bent must become weak. 18. This bow now long bent is growing weak. 19. The army picked up many stragglers on the way. 20. The army by the bye picked up many stragglers on the way here. 21. At last just before morning the fury of the storm abated. 22. Tell me not in mournful numbers life is but an empty dream. 23. This trouble for the most part comes of putting your trust in old time-tables. 24. To-day in short has been a happy one. 25. He saved fifty dollars or even more over and above expenses. 26. The light of the nearest fixed star takes four years or thereabouts to reach the earth. 27. The light of that small star seen by you now at the beginning of the twentieth century has just arrived here after nineteen centuries of flying through space. 28. Difficult things in fact are the only things worth doing. Blackie. 29. Let your company be always when possible better than yourself. Blackie. 30. The act of giving up a fixed purpose in view of some slight inconvenience is dangerous to character. Blackie.

where

505. PRACTISE EXERCISE. Show commas are really needed. Every sentence but three needs two commas.

1. George Washington whom we all know about said that to be prepared for war is a good way to preserve peace. 2. President Charles W. Eliot who is president of Harvard University believes that every boy has his own strong points. 3. My head which is aching severely tells me to quit work. 4. This school-house which is a house to hold school in needs better ventilation. 5. My only brother who by the way is a farmer is in town today. 6. His face which was easy to see at that distance was ruddy. 7. The moon which was covered with clouds last night is bright this evening. 8. The moons that go round Jupiter are invisible to the naked eye. 9. My very best hat which I have had only a week is spoiled by the rain. 10. When we visited the town where my uncle lives we had a fine time. 11. When we visited Oakland where my uncle lives we had a fine time. 12. He that runs may read.

Note to the Teacher. There is no better way of fixing the principles of punctuation in mind than to require, at this point, a month of daily compositions. A hundred words, written in class, will take about thirty or forty minutes. Narrative is the best type for the purpose in hand. At the beginning of the hour the teacher can tell some extremely short anecdote, in his own words, leaving the students to reproduce it in theirs. In the third and fourth weeks each pupil may properly be asked to write daily an account of the preceding day—what he did and saw.

CHAPTER XII

FORMS OF WORDS

506. In every language we find groups of words having similar form, as leaf, leaves, leaf's, leaves'. The simplest word of the group is called the word, or the simple form, and the rest are called inflected forms of the word, or merely inflections. To inflect is to "bend" "" or change the word.

507. In early times English had many inflections, whereas now it has but few. Our forefathers used nine forms of the word glad, namely glad, gladu, glades, gladre, gladum, gladne, glade, glada, gladra. All the inflectional endings have now been dropped. Otherwise we should be saying, John is glad, and Jane is gladu, and we are all glade. Our early ancestors thought they needed all these forms; our later ancestors discovered that one form would serve as well as many. Savage races still delight in unnecessary inflections; they like to ring the changes of sound.