PREFACE. THIS book is intended primarily for use in high schools and academies. But, at the same time, it is issued in the confidence that it will be found suggestive and useful for the lower classes in colleges and universities, so long at least as our preparatory schools shall continue to send to them students practically untrained, or sadly mistrained, in this important branch of English. Grammar is faithfully taught the pupils through text-books, and they come with their heads full of theory, and hundreds of rules at their tongues' end, but they cannot write a single clear, smooth English sentence. Let them, at least once a week, devote a little time to putting these rules and theories into practice. No doubt one reason why this has not been done, is that so few text-books have been available which would relieve the teacher of the burden of finding appropriate themes, and of setting the pupils to work in the right direction. That is what this book aims to do. It is not intended to take the place of a Rhetoric, much less of a Grammar. There is not a formal rule in it, though numerous apposite suggestions are made, and certain fundamental principles are everywhere kept in view. The best results will be obtained by using the book to supplement some more technical grammatical and rhetorical treatise, such as |