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Thus,

the teacher absenting himself, there was no school;
one of them having fallen, the rest ran away;

it being very cold, we made a fire;

or, with the passive participle,

this said, he sat down;

the signal being given, they started;

the ceremony having been completed, we dispersed.

Instead of a simple passive participle, or an adjective or other word or phrase, being taken directly with the noun or pronoun in absolute construction, an auxiliary being or having been is very often introduced, the other then becoming a predicate after it (just as in the ordinary appositive construction, 457): for example,

this having been said, he sat down;
his heart being heavy with sorrow;

and so in other like cases.

Such phrases as

we sitting, as I said, the cock crew loud;

I having hold of both, they whirl asunder;
how can we be happy, thou being absent?

show that in the absolute construction the noun or pronoun is regularly in the nominative case. But instances of the objective are also sometimes found in

good English writing, especially of an earlier time: thus,

this inaccessible high strength, us dispossessed, he trusted to have seized.

462. It may be added, finally, that the simple participles are, in the same manner as ordinary adjectives, used substantively, or as nouns.

Thus,

the living and the dead;

the poor and suffering;

the lost, buried, and forgotten.

EXERCISES TO CHAPTER XV.

ON INFINITIVES AND PARTICIPLES.

The parsing of infinitives and participles calls for no special explanations or directions. Each is to be defined as being this or that infinitive or participle, or infinitive or participle phrase, belonging to such and such a verb, of such a conjugation (see the directions for the parsing of verbs, p. 131 etc.); and the construction is then to be stated, in accordance with the principles laid down in this chapter. XXIX. Infinitive Constructions: §§ 443-51.

To be contents his natural desire.

To fly from need not be to hate mankind.

To seek philosophy in Scripture is to seek the dead among the living; to seek religion in Nature is to seek the living among the dead.

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Oh, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.

For not to have been dipped in Lethe lake
Could save the son of Thetis from to die.

To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime.

The toil

Of dropping buckets into empty wells,

And growing old in drawing nothing up.

He hopes to merit heaven by making earth a hell.

It comes either from weakness or guiltiness to fear shadows. I can see that Mrs. Grant is anxious for her not finding Mansfield dull as winter comes on.

Some people never will distinguish between predicting an eclipse and conspiring to bring it on.

Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

I don't wonder at people's giving him to me for a lover.

The brazen throat of war had ceased to roar.

There the wicked cease from troubling.

Leaves have their time to fall, and flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath.

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.

None knew her but to love her;

None named her but to praise.

The King's persisting in such designs was the height of folly. The learn'd is happy Nature to explore.

Freedom has a thousand charms to show.

He lies with not a friend to close his eyes.

They gave him knowledge of his wife's being there.

He altered much upon the hearing it.

The loud ethereal trumpet from on high 'gan blow.
Our cradle is the starting place;

Life is the running of the race.

Man never is, but always to be, blest.

Thus hast thou seen one world begin and end.

We often had the traveller or stranger visit us to taste our gooseberry wine.

I hope she takes me to be flesh and blood.

I might command you to be slain for this.

The Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth.

In our island the Latin appears never to have superseded the old Gallic speech.

The story was by tradition affirmed to be truth..

There's no greater luxury in the world than being read to sleep.

XXX. Participle Constructions: §§ 455-62.

The neighbors, hearing what was going forward, came flocking about us.

The melting Phoebe stood wringing her hands.

Thus I found her straying in the park.

In other hands I have known it triumphed in and boasted of with reason.

I'll have thee hanged to feed the crow.

They set him free without his ransom paid.

With my minstrel brethren fled, my jealousy of song is dead. No longer relieving the miserable, he sought only to enrich himself by their misery.

Finding myself suddenly deprived of the company and pleasures of the town, I grew melancholy.

To whom being going, almost spent with hunger, I am fallen in this offence.

Her voice is truth, told by music; theirs are jingling instru ments of falsehood.

This happy night the Frenchmen are secure,
Having all day caroused and banqueted.

Things are lost in the glare of day

Which I can make the sleeping see.

The younger, who was yet a boy, had nothing striking in his appearance.

Thou knowest what a thing is poverty among the fallen on evil days.

The French, having been dispersed in a gale, had put back to Toulon.

That arose from the fear of my cousin hearing of these matters. I cannot accept the notion of school-life affecting the poet to this extent.

I grant that, men continuing what they are, there must be war.
Conscience, her first law broken, wounded lies.

She being down, I have the placing of the British crown.
The hour concealed, and so remote the fear,

Death still draws nearer, never seeming near.

These injuries having been comforted externally, Mr. Pecksniff having been comforted internally, they sat down.

Shame, thou looking on, would utmost vigor raise.

Six frozen winters spent,

Return with welcome home from banishment.

Miss Jervois loves to sit up late, either reading or being read to.

There was a good fire in the next parlor, which the company were about to leave, being then paying their reckoning.

CHAPTER XVI.

INTERROGATIVE AND IMPERATIVE SENTENCES.

463. The only kind of sentence of which we have thus far treated is that by which something is asserted or declared, and which is therefore called the ASSERTIVE or DECLARATIVE sentence.

But (as has been already more than once pointed out: 22, 338) this is not the only kind of sentence that we use.

Instead of making a matter the subject of assertion, we sometimes make it the subject of inquiry. If we want to know about anything, we do not need to (though we always may) make a statement of our want: saying, for example,

I desire to know from you whether John is here;

we say instead,

is John here?

Again, we express a command or request without putting it in the form of an assertion. Instead of saying

I wish (or command) that you come here,

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These are fundamentally different forms of sentence, because they lack the assertion or predication which is the essential element of an ordinary sentence. Information, inquiry, command- these are the three established uses of communication between man and man, each having its own form of expression.

THE INTERROGATIVE SENTENCE.

464. The INTERROGATIVE sentence, that by which inquiry is made, differs least from the assertive, has least that is peculiar to itself.

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