Undoubtedly the diagram may be abused, but discreetly used it undoubtedly also may serve a good end. It brings before the eye in a clear and simple way those principles of analysis which have been worked out in the mind. Mental analysis must always precede diagraming, but the diagram is an excellent short-hand device for holding together in a rapid survey a variety of complicated details which otherwise could be presented only by means of a lengthy description. Any system of diagraming which does this is a good one, and pupils should be encouraged to try their own ingenuity in working out devices which answer the purpose.

In conclusion the author wishes to say that he has not undertaken to write a new elementary grammar without some sense of the gravity of the undertaking. It is easy to write a poor elementary book, but nothing is more difficult than to write a good one. To strike the happy mean between scholarship and simplicity, between originality and conservatism, to hold fast to the old--but not too fast, to love the new only when it is good and necessary, not because it flatters the author's pride in his ingenuity, these are some of the difficulties which the writer of an elementary grammar has to face. The author of the present one is not so rash as to believe that he has always met and satisfactorily overcome these difficulties. He will be satisfied if his work prove to be practically helpful, and if it add ever so little toward the realization of that ideal method in the study of English grammar for which we must still look ahead to the future.

After his own experience in the teaching of elementary grammar, the author is chiefly indebted for help in the preparation of this volume to those Saturday morning

classes in English grammar which he has had the pleasure of conducting in the Teachers College of Columbia University for the past four or five years. The free interchange of opinion at these sessions, among teachers who were not only interested but professionally informed in the subject, has been of the greatest assistance to the author; and he sincerely hopes that this formal presentation of the matter of many of these Saturday discussions may at least in part repay the debt which he owes to the participants in them.

NEW YORK, January, 1908.

THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH

GRAMMAR.

CHAPTER I.-WHAT GRAMMAR IS.

1. Words and Sentences.-In order to express ideas, whether by speech, writing, or printing, we make use of words. These words are united into groups, and the groups of words which one properly forms for the expression of thought make Sentences. All speech and all writing is made up of a succession of sentences. In speaking we indicate the grouping of words into sentences by the tone of the voice and by pauses; but in printing and in writing, the sentences are marked by ending each sentence with a period, or a question mark, or an exclamation point, according to the nature of the sentence, and also by beginning every sentence with a capital letter.1

2. The Parts of Speech.-When a group of words forms a sentence, each word in the group has a definite part or function to perform. In the two sentences, The horse gallops, and The dog barks, the words horse and dog perform the same function. Their part is to name objects about which we wish to say something. So also gallops and barks perform the same function by showing what the horse and dog are doing. In order to make it easy to talk about these different functions of words in

1 For further account of the rules of capitalization and punctuation, see Appendix.

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