family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible. In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything about it went wrong, and would go wrong in spite of him. His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray, or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some out-door work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst-conditioned farm in the neighborhood. - WASHINGTON IRVING. III. THE POET'S SONG. The rain had fallen, the Poet arose, He passed by the town and out of the street, And chanted a melody loud and sweet, The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee, The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak, And stared, with his foot on the prey, And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many songs, But never a one so gay, For he sings of what the world will be When the years have died away.” — ALFRED Tennyson. IV. LEAVES. The leaves, as we shall see immediately, are the feeders of the plant. Their own orderly habits of succession must not interfere with their main business of finding food. Where the sun and air are, the leaf must go, whether it be out of order or not. So, therefore, in any group, the first consideration with the young leaves is much like that of young bees, how to keep out of each other's way, that every one may at once leave its neighbors as much free-air pasture as possible, and obtain a relative freedom for itself. This would be a quite simple matter, and produce other simply balanced forms, if each branch, with open air all round it, had nothing to think of but reconcilement of interests among its own leaves. But every branch has others to meet or to cross, sharing with them, in various advantage, what shade, or sun, or rain is to be had. Hence every single leaf-cluster presents the general aspect of a little family, entirely at unity among themselves, but obliged to get their living by various shifts, concessions, and infringements of the family rules, in order not to invade the privileges of other people in their neighborhood. -JOHN RUSKIN. INDEX. Absolute construction, 140. Adjective phrase, 165. Adjective pronoun, 53. Adverbs, 12, 20; classes of, 125, 126; Adverbial clause, 178, 179; denoting Adverbial conjunction, 126. Apposition, 140. Appositive, 140. Appositive phrase, 165. Articles, 67; definite, 67; indefinite, Auxiliary verbs, 90, 100-114; have, 102, 103; do, 104; shall, 105-107; Bare subject, 163. Be, 107-109; forms of, 107, 108; as Can, forms of, III; use of, III. Clause, 55, 165; independent or prin- Comparative degree, 70, 71; forma- Complement, 164. Complex sentences, 166, 177-186; Compound adjective, 67. Compound conjunctions, 134. Compound personal pronouns, 51, 53; Compound possessives, 42. Compound prepositions, 131. Compound sentences, 187–190; struc- Conjugation, 94-118; strong or old, 94, 95-97; weak or new, 94, 98, 99 ; Conjunctions, 16, 20; classes of, 133, Copulative conjunctions, 133. Correlatives, 134. Declarative sentence, I. Declension, 39, 138; of nouns, 39; of personal pronouns, 49, 50; of com- |