PART SIX

Exercises in Review

IT is assumed that the student, before beginning the study of this book, acquired a working knowledge of the principles of English grammar. It may be necessary, however, before he undertakes to perform the exercises following, to review thoroughly, by reference to any standard text on grammar, the principles governing the classification of the phrase, the clause, and the sentence.

He should be able to state unhesitatingly whether a phrase is prepositional or participial or infinitive in structure, whether it is adjective or adverbial or substantive or independent in office; whether a clause is independent or subordinate in rank, and whether it is if subordinate adjective or adverbial or substantive in office. His ability to make these discriminations carries with it the ability to discriminate from one another simple, compound, and complex, complex-compound, and compound-complex sentences.

EXERCISE I

a. In the following selected passages, what sentences are simple? compound? complex? Give the reason for each answer.

b. Point out the subordinate clauses and state the office of each.

c. Classify the phrases in respect to structure and to office.

d. Point out the grammatical ellipses.

e. Name the allusions, and make a list of the more vivid descriptive terms.

1. Thoreau's thin, penetrating, big-nosed face, even in a bad woodcut, conveys some hint of the limitations of his mind and character. With his almost acid sharpness of insight, with his almost animal dexterity in act, there went none of that large, unconscious geniality of the world's heroes. He was not easy, not ample, not urbane, not even kind; his enjoyment was hardly smiling, or the smile was not broad enough to be convincing; he had no waste lands nor kitchen midden in his nature, but was all improved and sharpened to a point. "He was bred to no profession," says Emerson; "he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the state; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. When asked at dinner what dish he preferred, he answered, "The nearest.'" So many negative superiorities begin to smack a little of the prig. From his later works he was in the habit of cutting out the humorous passages, under the impression that they were beneath the dignity of his moral muse; and there we see the prig stand public and confessed. . . .

He was no ascetic, rather an Epicurean of the