QUESTIONS OF USAGE F any proof were needed of the fact that an immense number of people take an intense. interest in the right and wrong use of the English language, and also of the further fact that their interest is out of all proportion to their knowledge of the history of our speech, such proof could be found in the swift and unceasing eruption of "letters to the editor" which broke out in many of the American newspapers immediately after the publication of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's 'Recessional.' The exciting cause of this rash exhibition was found in the line which told us that The shouting and the tumult dies. The gross blunder in this sentence leaped to the eyes of many whose acquaintance with the principles of English construction was confined to what they chanced to remember of the rules learned by heart in their grammar-school days. But there were others whose reading was a little wider, and who were able to cite precedents in Mr. Kipling's favor from Milton and from Shakspere and from the King James translation of the Bible. Yet the argument from the past failed to convince some of the original protestants, one of whom suggested that the erring poet should be sent to a night-school, while another objected to any further discussion of the subject, since a person who does n't know that the plural form of the verb is used when the subject of said verb is two or more nouns in the singular number should receive no mention in a reputable newspaper." It may be doubted whether the altercation was really bloody enough to demand attention from the disreputable newspapers, altho it was fierce and intolerant while it lasted. The battle raged for a fortnight, and the foundations of the deep were broken up. Yet it was really a tempest in a teapot, and oil for the troubled waters was ready at hand had any of those in danger of shipwreck thought to make use of it. In Professor Lounsbury's 'History of the English Language'-a book from which it is a constant pleasure to quote, since it combines sound scholarship, literary skill, and common sense in an uncommon degree-we are told that "rules have been and still are laid down . which never had any existence outside of the minds of grammarians and verbal critics. By |