Egg Finger issue 1 part 1 (Egg Finger: Orgy of Violence)

This is a problem with confusion of motivation, means, and goal. But vengeance, greed, and ambition are not goals. These are motivations that drive action. And beginning the War of the Five Kings is not a goal, either. The war and the chaos it brings achieves nothing in and of itself, and must be a means to some end. His GOAL is to incite a Braavosi invasion of Westeros that will result in a reorganization of Westerosi feudal society based on Braavosi republicanism With Baelish as their installed representative overseeing the process as Lord Protector.

Martin has yet to release a POV chapter from his perspective. In the moments when Petyr does explain himself, the reader must ask if they can trust the explanations he is giving. Lord Baelish is one of the top five players in the game of thrones, and specializes in confusing potential adversaries. So any theories concerning Petyr Baelish require flexibility as far as evidence is concerned.

First we must ask a few basic questions. Is Petyr Baelish greedy? That is, is he in this game for accruing wealth? I do not believe so. Petyr Baelish is a man of simple tastes. He does not dress in too much finery. He owns a brothel but we never see him partake in whoring. Is Petyr Baelish power-hungry? That is, is he in this game simply to gain power? Again, I do not believe so. Further, by refusing to take his position in Harrenhal, Lord Baelish is setting aside real legal power in order to play a dangerous game tip-toeing around the Lords Declarant in the Vale.

This theory does not discount this possibility, it only downplays any power ambition in favor of another motivation. Is Petyr Baelish vengeful? Lord Baelish remembers hurts and seeks revenge. Ser Dontos had ample motive and opportunity and came from a traitor house, it would have been easy to frame him. Further, Petyr has a habit of killing those who threaten Sansa: King Joffrey who beat and humiliated her, Lady Lysa attempted murder, and Marillion attempted rape.

I believe that Petyr cares deeply for Sansa, and is driven to passionate vengeance against whoever hurts her. Joffrey was a force for chaos. If anything, killing Joffrey stabilized the realm. The murder of Lady Lysa comes off especially passionate. So if vengeance is his primary motivation, who is he taking vengeance against with his overall plan? It cannot be the late Brandon Stark, who wounded Lord Baelish in a duel and took his lady love. Nor does it appear to be Hoster Tully, who forbade Petyr from marrying his daughter and then exiled him to the Fingers after the pregnancy of Lady Lysa.

And if he wanted Ned dead, he could have justifiably killed him during the coup, instead of ensuring his safe capture. But I believe Petyr can see that individuals are not who hurt him. Cat did not choose Brandon or Ned, they were chosen for her by Hoster. Ned Stark had no more choice in the matter than Cat did. If Lord Baelish were plotting against the upper echelon of Westerosi nobility, you would expect him to have few or no allies within that class of people. Rather, you would expect him to conspire with people who would benefit from his end goal. And Petyr surrounds himself with middle-class people of high talent, the people who would stand to benefit most from a republican form of government and the fall of the established feudal hierarchy.

Ser Lothor is, by all appearances, absolutely loyal to Lord Baelish. And Lord Baelish, by all appearances, absolutely trusts Lothor Brune. Queen Cersei will match any offer Petyr made. A republican form of government would be appealing to this culture. This theory requires Petyr to have a well-funded military ally to enforce his end goal, in this case the Free City of Braavos.

This is purely speculation, but speculation informed by several connections Lord Baelish has with the Secret City. Petyr himself comes from Braavosi stock through his great grandfather, a sellsword in the service of the Corbrays. Petyr may have family contacts in Braavos, and perhaps his Braavosi heritage makes him more appealing to contacts in the Iron Bank or other guilds within the Secret City.

Further evidence of a Braavosi connection can be found in the behavior of the Merling King. Not only is the King a Braavosi trading galley, but her first destination following the death of the King is the Free City of Braavos, with a difficult and dangerous side-trip to the Fingers to drop off Lord Baelish at his boyhood home. This side-trip, by the way, costs the ship several crewmembers with no chance to offload or take on any cargo. The captain risked all in order to deliver Petyr to the Fingers.

Is this because Petyr paid him or because the captain is working with Petyr towards his ultimate goal? If Petyr is merely paying the captain, the same problem as the Lothor Brune situation arises. After dropping off Petyr, the King departs for Braavos. Remember, it was Oswell who went to Braavos to hire dwarf entertainers for the Purple Wedding, evidence that Petyr often sends people to correspond with Braavos.

A third factor we would expect to see if this theory were true would be hostility from Lord Baelish toward highborns. Gathering evidence for this is tricky, as all the chapters dealing with Petyr come from the POV of said highborns, and Lord Baelish is a master at hiding his intentions from his adversaries. Nearly every interaction between the two men results in a hidden or half-hidden insult from Petyr to Ned. Only the first of those is truly her own, and it will soon desert her.

One does not choose to be beautiful or highborn. Petyr grants Cersei her beauty, but denies her birth. In this way, he explains that high birth is not an intrinsic value belonging to a person, but a value held up by societal structures. He clearly cares for her, and whether the source of that caring is a creepy physical attraction, a creepier projection of Catelyn upon her daughter, or something else, it is important to answer one question regarding their relationship: She even cooperates with the lies surrounding the murder of her aunt.

But despite this, Petyr only gives her limited information. Sansa comes from an upper echelon family, an old and powerful house that stands to lose much in his world. It is doubtful that someone born as noble as Sansa could comprehend what a republic is. Republicanism and the egalitarianism it would bring are radical departures from the established order of their society. As such, Sansa Stark will always be a potential enemy to Lord Baelish. But Alayne Stone, she is sure to be a steadfast ally. Wargs are warned that staying too long in their beasts will turn them bestial when they come back to their own skins Prologue ADwD.

As Alayne, she manages a household, serves Sweetrobin, deals with the smallfolk, and is treated the way a bastard daughter of a minor nobleman would be treated. Petyr gave Alayne a Braavosi background as the granddaughter of a merchant prince Tying into the Braavos connections. This takes Sansa from the upper echelon of society down to the lower middle-class. Lord Baelish is shaping Alayne into a woman who will support his middle-class agenda. He needs Sansa to be Alayne so that she wants what Petyr wants.

Is there any evidence of this? We would expect Petyr to increase his trust in Sansa as she increased in her role as Alayne. This is a violent attack against nobility, taking one of the most highborn women in Westeros and essentially turning her lowborn. Braavos was formed from the escaped slaves of Old Valyria. Often called the secret city, it existed for a hundred years hidden in the mists of its harbor before unmasking itself to the world and rising to become the most powerful of all the Free Cities much like Lord Baelish shall do at the appointed time.

Most important for this argument, Braavos is a republic. Though we do not yet fully understand the politics of Braavos, we do know it is a republic that elects its leader. Republics, generally, offer a way for those as capable as Petyr Baelish to bloodlessly rise in power, regardless of who they were born to. But whatever the internal mechanics of Braavosi republicanism, it is doubtless the Iron Bank of Braavos that remains the most important institution in the city.

Further, when Arya first enters Braavos, the audience gets a glimpse of Braavosi military might, including the Arsenal of Braavos, a complex capable of building an entire warship in a single day. It is my belief that Lord Baelish intends to turn this military might against the Iron Throne. But what could motivate Braavos to invade Westeros? In Dance , we hear from Illyrio Mopatis: But in the wider context of worldbuilding, this line establishes that Braavos is a country willing to go to war to impose its societal values on other sovereign states.

Peasants in feudal societies are tied to the land, and lands belong to lords. A lord expects peasants to work his land and hand over the vast majority of the fruits without complaint. At any time, a lord may decide to raise a levy within his territory and force able-bodied men to fight for him.

Refusing to join the levy is rebellion and punishable by death. The freedom of smallfolk called villeins or serfs historically is entirely curtailed. This is a step above slavery, but a freer society like Braavos will still look down at the practices of the Westerosi highborns. And, if there is enough potential profit from it, could use this as a casus belli for war against the Seven Kingdoms. The potential profit may come from increased access to Westerosi timber resources, a commodity Samwell Tarley notes is particularly rare in Braavos This type of resource war would mirror 20 th century wars waged for increased access to oil.

A second, and more legal, casus belli for the Braavosi invasion will come from a default of Westerosi crown debt to the Iron Bank. This debt was built primarily by Lord Baelish, and he put in safeguards to ensure it would never be paid. The other sizable portions of the debt are owed to the Faith of Seven and the Lannisters.

This debt is difficult to explain. A likely explanation is that Petyr has been finding ways to drive up debt by increasing expenditures within the city, while simultaneously increasing the incomes to justify his position as Master of Coin. There is a massive disparity between the number of prisoners held in the dungeons and the numbers of gaolers hired to watch them. The best explanation for this is Petyr Baelish placing his people in every nook and cranny he could fit them, using borrowed crown money to secure their positions for the coming Republican Revolution.

A default on the debt would grant the Iron Bank the legal right to seek recompense from the defaulting party. In this case, the crown itself would be used as collateral for the debt. The merchant princes of Braavos would rouse themselves for war through the prospect of freeing the people of Westeros from the tyranny of feudalism Opening up the lucrative markets of Westeros notwithstanding. Why would they do this if they were planning on financing the Republican Revolution? A possible explanation is that it allows the Iron Bank to justify the presence of mercenary companies in Westeros prior to Braavosi intervention.

At the outset of the Republican Revolution, these mercenary companies would be in a position to turn cloak, destroy the last of the Baratheons, and wage a Northern Campaign to secure Winterfell for the Republicans. When the Northern Lords see Sansa by the side of the Republican leaders, they may support the Republican cause.

Besides, the independent streak found in the Northmen is likely to slant Republican anyways, especially among the Northern Mountain Clans. Lord Baelish needs to participate in an orgy of violence in order to become the Lord of Harrenhal and Lord Protector of the Vale. He murders Lord Arryn, betrays Lord Stark, incites bloody riots, fights at the Blackwater, attempts to kill Tyrion Lannister on at least one occasion, and finally murders Lady Lysa Tully. The maintenance and modification of the status quo is done through force of arms. Appreciable differences in the shape of Westerosi society have, by and large, come through catastrophic warfare.

The Seven Kingdoms became one through the violence of dragonfire. The Targaryen dynasty fell through the violence of the Rebellion. And anyone attempting to alter the status quo has required armies to do so. We have yet to hear of any such internal warfare in the Free City of Braavos, however.

This is because republics uniquely offer a chance for bloodless coups at appointed times. It is much easier and much safer for someone to win an election than it is to win a rebellion, and this is the advantage republicanism brings to the table. But to get there, it will require a forceful overthrow of the status quo, just as has occurred for centuries in Westeros. There were seven of us, counting Daddy who was rarely home, but our table was always set for twelve and sometimes forty.

Dinner was an exciting event and we washed our knees, changed our clothes and brushed our hair with anticipatory fervor. Mother sat at one end of the table and Daddy at the other, if he was home, Gammy sat at Daddy's right and we children were spaced to eliminate fighting. Daddy had made a rule and it was strictly enforced, whether or not he was home, that only subjects of general interest were to be discussed at the table.

This eliminated all such contributions from us, as "There is a boy in my room at school who eats flies," and "Myrna Hepplewaite stuck out her tongue at me and I said bah, bah, bah and she hit me back and I told her mother. I resent heartily dining at someone's house and having all my best stories interrupted by "Not such a big bite, Hubert," or "Mummy, didn't you say the Easter Bunny came down the chimney?

As soon as we were settled in Laurelhurst, Daddy decided that in addition to Mary's, Darsie's and my singing, piano, ballet, folk dancing, French and dramatics and Cleve's clarinet lessons, we should all have lessons in general usefulness and self-reliance. His first step in this direction was to have Mary and Cleve and me paint the roof of our three-story house.

The roof was to be red and we were each given a bucket of paint, a wide brush, a ladder and some vague general instructions about painting. It seems that there was a shortage of ladders so Cleve and I were on the same one—he was just a rung or two ahead of me and both of us biting our lips and dipping our brushes and slapping on the red paint for all we were worth. We weren't working hard because we liked this job; we didn't, we just thought it was another one of Daddy's damnfool notions and we wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. Cleve and I had just finished the small area over the back porch and were moving up when something went wrong and Cleve dumped his bucket of paint over my head and down the back of my neck.

Gammy cleaned me off with turpentine but she grumbled about it and said, "It's a wonder to me you aren't all dead with the ideas some Men get. Daddy's next step was the purchase of a. Those children will kill each other—please, Darsie, don't give them a gun. Mary and I were both rather nearsighted and very poor shots but Cleve was a good shot and practised all the time. Cleve became such an expert marksman that he took up hunting when he was only ten years old and Daddy thought it was a fine idea until Cleve 33 drew a bead and fired at a quail that was perched on the sill of a huge curved bay window of a neighbor's house.

None of the neighbors was killed but the bay window was very expensive and so the gun was put away for a while and Daddy bought us an enormous bow and arrow and a big straw target. While he and Cleve were practising archery, Mary and I were learning to cook. Mother supervised this herself as she was a marvellous cook and Gammy was the world's worst. Mother taught us to put a pinch of clove and lots of onion in with a pot roast; to make French dressing with olive oil and to rub the bowl with garlic; to make mayonnaise and Thousand Island dressing; to cook a sliver of onion with string beans; never to mash potatoes until just before serving; to measure the ingredients for coffee; and always to scald out the teapot.

Gammy taught us that when you bake a cake you put in anything you can lay your hands on. A little onion, several old jars of jam, leftover batter cake dough, the rest of the syrup in the jug, a few grapes, cherries, raisins, plums or dates, and always to use drippings instead of butter or shortening. Her cakes were simply dreadful—heavy and tan and full of seeds and pits. She made a great show of having her feelings hurt if we didn't eat these cakes but I really think she only offered them to us as a sort of character test because if we were strong and refused, she'd throw them out to the dogs or chickens without a qualm.

Gammy said she did not believe in waste and she nearly drove our maids crazy by filling up the icebox with little dishes containing one pea, three string beans, a quarter of a teaspoonful of jam or a slightly used slice of lemon. If Mother finally demanded a cleanup and began jerking dishes out of the refrigerator and throwing stuff away, Gammy would become very huffy and go out and get a twenty-five pound sack of flour and hand it to Mother, saying, "Go on, throw this away too. Into these she put the same ingredients she put in the cakes but added much more flour.

These cookies were big and round and about half an inch thick. They stuck to the roof of the mouth and had no taste. What to do with them became quite a problem when we finally settled down and weren't moving around any more. They were stacking up alarmingly in the kitchen and lying around the back porch untouched when the Warrens moved across the street from us. The Warrens had a beautiful colonial house and two cars, but their children—there were four of them, two boys and two girls—ate dog biscuits.

Why, I don't know, but they did. Warren kept a one-hundred-pound sack on the back porch and the little Warrens filled their pockets after school and nibbled at them while playing Kick the Can. We tried some once, and they weren't much of a shock after Gammy's cakes but we didn't care for the rather bitter tang they had—it was no doubt the dried blood and bone.

One day the Warren children stopped at our house before going home for their dog biscuits and Gammy happened to be baking cookies she happened to be baking cookies about six days a week—she said that they were cheap and filling and would save on the grocery bill and she forced us all to take some. The Warrens liked them. We were amazed and took a few tentative bites ourselves to see if these cookies might be different. They were the same big stuffy, tasteless things they had always been, but I guess compared to dog biscuit they were delicious because the Warrens begged for more and the suckers got them.

All they could eat and all we couldn't eat. From that day on they ate all Gammy's output and we didn't have to flinch as we watched her pour the rest of the French dressing and a jar of "working" plums into her cookie dough. When I was twelve years old Daddy died in Butte of streptococcic pneumonia.

My sister Alison, who has red hair, was born five months later.

The Egg and I, by Betty MacDonald

It was a very sad year but rendered less tragic and more hectic by a visit from Deargrandmother, who came out to comfort Mother and make our lives a living hell. She dressed Mary and me in dimities and leghorn hats; asked who our friends were and what their fathers did; she wouldn't let Gammy work in her garden as it was unbecoming to a lady, so Gammy had to sneak out and hoe her potatoes and squash at eleven o'clock at night; she wouldn't let our old Scotch nurse eat at the table with us and insulted her by calling her a servant; she picked her way downtown as though we had wooden sidewalks; and was "amused" by anything she saw in our shops because this wasn't New York.

Our only recourse was to go out to the laundry, which was a large room built on the back of the house and connected to the kitchen by a series of hallways and screened porches, with Nurse and Gammy, where we would make tea on the laundry stove and talk about Deargrandmother. When she finally left for New York we took life in our own hands again and things continued much the same as they had before Daddy died except we were poorer and fewer of our guests were Mother's and Daddy's and Gammy's friends and more and more of them were friends of Mary's.

As an economy measure we had stopped all our lessons but the piano and the ballet, and we were to go to public schools in the fall. In high school and college my sister Mary was very popular with the boys, but I had braces on my teeth and got high marks. Mary brought hundreds of boys to the house but she also brought hundreds of other girls, so I usually baked the waffles and washed the dishes with a 36 large "apern" tied over my Honor Society Pin and my aching heart.

Gammy used to tell me that I was the type who would appeal to "older men," but as my idea of an older man was one of the Smith Brothers on the coughdrop box I took small comfort in this. To make matters worse I suddenly stopped being green and skinny and became rosy and fat. I grew a large, firm bust and a large, firm stomach and that was not the style. The style was my best friend, who was five feet ten inches tall and weighed ninety-two pounds. She had a small head and narrow shoulders and probably looked like a thermometer, but I thought she was simply exquisite.

I bought my dresses so tight I had to ease into them like bolster covers and I took up smoking and drinking black coffee but still I had a large, firm bust, just under my chin, and a large, firm stomach slightly lower down. I am sure that Mary also had a bust and stomach but hers didn't seem to hamper her as mine did me.

Perhaps it was because she had "life. I was handy around the house and Mother taught me to mitre sheets at the corners and to make a bed as smooth as glass. Gammy smoothed up her beds right over cold hot-water bottles, books, toys, nightgowns or anything else that was dumped there in the hurry of the morning. Mother insisted that anything worth doing is worth doing well, but Gammy said, "Don't be so finicky.

1. The Gratitude Journal: A 21 Day Challenge to More Gratitude, Deeper Relationships, and Greater Joy (A Life of Gratitude).
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4. Then You Were Gone?

You'll just have to do it over again tomorrow. Mother set the table with candles and silver and glassware and flowers every night whether we had company or not. Gammy preferred to eat in the kitchen with peeler knives and carving forks as utensils. Mother taught me to wash dishes, first the glassware, then the silver, then the china and last the 37 pots and pans.

Gammy washed dishes, first a glass, then a greasy frying pan, then a piece or two of silver. Mother served food beautifully with parsley and paprika and attractive color combinations of vegetables. Gammy tossed things on the table in the dishes in which they had been cooked and when she served she crowded the food into one frightened group, leaving most of the plate bare. It was a lesson in cross-purposes and the result now is that one day I barely clean my house and the next day I'm liable to lick the rafters and clean out nail holes with a needle.

When I was seventeen years old and a sophomore in college, my brother, Cleve, brought home for the weekend a very tall, very handsome older man. His brown skin, brown hair, blue eyes, white teeth, husky voice and kindly, gentle way were attributes enough in themselves and produced spasms of admiration from Mary and her friends, but the most wonderful thing about him, the outstanding touch, was that he liked me. I still cannot understand why unless it was that he was overcome by so much untrammeled girlishness. He took me to dinner, dancing and the movies and I fell head over heels in love, to his evident delight, and when I was eighteen we were married.

Bob was thirteen years older than I but a far cry from the Smith Brothers. Why do more or less intelligent people go on honeymoons, anyway? I have yet to find a couple who enjoyed theirs. And, if you have to go on a honeymoon, why pick quaint, old-world towns like Victoria, B.

We honeymooned in Victoria for a week and though I had 38 visited there many times previously, I was surprised that I hadn't noticed what a dull place it was. Bob, that dear, gay, understanding companion of our courtship days, sat with chin on chest staring moodily at the dancers while I ate. I ate all of the time we were in Victoria. I was too fat and I wanted desperately not to eat and be willowy and romantic but there seemed nothing else to do. Bob ate almost nothing and looked furtive like a trapped animal. I guess it is quite a wrench for a bachelor to give up his freedom, particularly when, every time he looks at his wife, he realizes that he is facing a future teeming with large grocery bills.

On the boat going up to Victoria, Bob seemed to be well established in the insurance business and held forth at some length on premiums, renewals and "age 65," and I determined to ask Mother just how much I should learn about insurance in order to be helpful but not meddlesome, and wondered what the wives of insurance men were like for friends. On the way back from Victoria, Bob talked of his childhood on a wheat ranch in Montana, his days at agricultural college and his first job as supervisor for a large chicken ranch.

When he spoke of the wheat ranch it was with about as much enthusiasm as one would use reminiscing of the first fifteen years in a sweat shop and I gathered that he thought farming hard, thankless work. But then he began on the chicken ranch job, sorting over the little details with the loving care usually associated with first baby shoes.

When he reached the figures—the cost per hen per egg, the cost per dozen eggs, the relative merits of outdoor runs, the square footage required per hen 39 —he recalled them with so much nostalgia that listening to him impartially was like trying to swim at the edge of a whirlpool. He told me at last that he had found a little place on the coast, where he often went on business, that was ideally situated for chicken ranching and could be bought for almost nothing. Why, Mother had taught me that a husband must be happy in his work and if Bob wanted to be happy in the chicken business I didn't care.

I knew how to make mayonnaise and mitre sheet corners and light candles for dinner, so, chickens or insurance, I could hold up my end. That's what I thought. That's what a lot of women think when their husbands become dewy-eyed at the sight of their breakfast eggs and start making plans for taking the life savings and plunging into the chicken business.

Why in God's name does everyone want to go into the chicken business? Why has it become the common man's Holy Grail? Is it because most men's lives are shadowed by the fear of being fired—of not having enough money to buy food and shelter for their loved ones and the chicken business seems haloed with permanency? Or is it that chicken farming with each man his own boss offers relief from the employer-employee problems which harry so many people?

There is one thing about the chicken business: In a way I suppose that one factor alone should be justification enough for most men's longing for chickens, but again I repeat, why chickens? Why not narcissus bulbs, cabbage seed, greenhouses, rabbits, pigs, goats? All can be raised in the country by one man and present but half the risk of chickens. The next morning after our return to Seattle, the alarm 40 went off with a clang at six-thirty; at six-thirty-one Bob, clad in a large wool plaid shirt, was stamping around the kitchen of our tiny apartment making coffee, and demanding that I hurry.

At eight-forty-five we had driven twelve miles and were boarding a ferry as the first lap in our journey to see the "little place. It was one of our better March days—it was, in fact, one of the March days we have up here which deceives people into thinking, "With spring like this we are sure to have a long, hot summer," and into stocking up on halters and shorts and sunglasses.

Then later, summer appears wan and shaking with ague and more like February. This March day, though, was strong and bright and Bob and I spent the long ferry ride walking the decks and admiring the deep blue waters of Puget Sound, the cerulean sky, densely wooded dark-green islands which floated serenely here and there, and the great range of Olympic Mountains obligingly visible in all of their snowy magnificence. These Olympics have none of the soft curves and girlish plumpness of Eastern mountains.

They are goddesses, full-breasted, broad-hipped, towering and untouchable. They are also complacent in the knowledge that they look just as mountains should. We were the only passengers on the large, crowded ferry who took a breath of fresh air or even glanced at the spectacular scenery. The rest of them, business men, salesmen, farmers' wives, mill workers and Indians, either remained below in their cars or the bus which boarded the ferry or huddled in the hot lounges and read newspapers in a bad light.

They were a forbidding-looking bunch and Bob and I ran a gantlet of ferociously hateful looks when we came heartily inside, after half an hour or so, stamping our cold feet and slamming the doors and searching hopefully for coffee. We found the coffee, dark green and lukewarm, in the galley and drank it to 41 the morose accompaniment of two farmers' wives discussing "the dreen tubes in Alice's incision.

I continued to smoke, so the other woman picked up a newspaper and waved it so vigorously that I was afraid she'd sweep our coffee cups into our laps. Bob hissed at me, "Better put out your cigarette," and I hissed back, "I wish I had a big black cigar," and he looked at me reproachfully and led me outside and handed me a small pamphlet which I thought might be a religious tract but turned out to be a small travel booklet describing the country, in the depths of which the prospective ranch was hidden.

It was a brochure of superlatives. Cape Flattery is the most westerly point in the United States. I thought the whole thing slightly hysterical but then I hadn't seen the country. Now I know that that country is describable only by superlatives. Most rugged, most westerly, greatest, deepest, largest, wildest, gamiest, richest, most fertile, loneliest, most desolate—they all belong to the coast country. The ferry landed, we drove ashore and made a circuit of the two streets which comprised Docktown. There were a great sawmill, a charming old Victorian hotel with beautifully 42 cared for lawns and shrubs, a company store, a string of ugly company houses, and a long pier where freighters were being loaded with lumber by an alarmingly undecided crane that paused first here, then there and finally dumped a gigantic load of planks almost on top of the longshoremen.

Curses flew up like sparks from the men as they scattered to safety but in a moment or so the air cleared and they were back at work. Cranes and piledrivers can keep me at a pitch of nervous excitement for hours and hours and when I finally do tear myself away it is always with the conviction that the operator is going to find the operation very difficult without my personal supervision.

I would have been content to lean on the sun-warmed railing of the ferry dock, smelling that delicious mixture of creosote, cedar and seaweed which characterizes coast mill towns, and watching the cranes for the rest of the day; but Bob warned me that we had a long drive ahead of us and if we intended to return that night we should get started. The road out of Docktown was dangerously curved and not too wide and alive with cars, trucks and logging trucks with terrific loads and terrible trailer tails that switched and slithered behind them.

Everyone drove as if he were going to a fire and on the wrong side of the road, and we were warned of approaching corners by the anguished screams of tires and brakes. Bob is an excellent driver but he was hard put to it to hold his own when a logging truck carrying three of the largest logs of the largest stand of Douglas fir in the world came winging around a curve and we had to leap the bank and scurry for the woods to avoid being smashed into oblivion by the playful trailer.

The driver leaned out and grinned and waved at us and then went careening off down the road. We backed carefully onto the road again and trundled sedately off, hugging the bank nervously when we spotted another logging 43 truck. After a while we left the woods and began skirting a great valley where emerald winter wheat, the velvety blackness of plowed fields and the tender green of new pastures checkered the bottom land. This was a dairy country and the smallest farms ran to three hundred and fifty acres. The houses, for the most part unattractive boxlike abodes, close to the road and unadorned with flowers or shrubbery, were across the road from their farm lands, their back porches snuggled against the blue-black tree-covered hillsides.

The barns, silos, bunkhouses and outbuildings, magnificent structures of generous proportions were on the valley side. I thought this arrangement had something to do with keeping the cattle out of the house until Bob informed me that the road had been put in after the ranches were laid out. Black and white Holstein cattle and deserted farms seemed to dominate the landscape and one was responsible for the other, according to Bob. This valley once boasted some of the finest Holstein herds in the country and the farmers invested heavily in breeding stock, but when the Holstein market collapsed some years back, many of them went bankrupt.

The farmers the Holstein market didn't get were soon put in their places by contagious abortion and tuberculosis in their herds and a Government drainage ditch, the assessments on which were terrific, on their lands. In addition to this they had the ever-present problem of marketing and were either at the mercy of the local creameries and cheese factory or occasional city firms, none of which, the farmers said, gave them a square deal.

Bob did not waste much sympathy on them, however; he said they were hopelessly unprogressive and many were using biblical methods of production and complaining because they couldn't compete in up-to-date markets. I had noticed wisps of smoke rising from the ground in the farthest fields. Years ago some of the farmers, in an effort to clear the practically unclearable peat land, set fire to some of the huge piles of logs, roots and trees unearthed during plowing.

When the roots and stumps had burned the farmers were surprised to find that the land itself was burning and that ditching, plowing and wet sacks were ineffective agents in putting it out. After much experimenting they learned that by digging four-foot-deep drainage ditches around a small area at a time, they could control the fire but this was such an undertaking that in most cases they let 'er burn. Hand-cultivated, it will grow potatoes almost as big as watermelons and about as watery, too," Bob concluded dismally.

You clear and plant a field and the next year your plow digs up a stump every three feet and you have to clear all over again. Every acre of it has to be tile drained, too. After that, for a time we drove along in silence while the unconquerable peat lay black and scornful in the valleys and the unconquerable forests thundered down at us from the hills. We did, and it boasted the mad confusion of four enterprises—a hotel, a barbershop, a gas station and a country store and post office. In addition there were a dear little graveyard and an imposing brick schoolhouse.

Five roads led away from this small town but Bob didn't hesitate. He chose one pointing southwest toward the frosty Olympic Mountains. For the next several hours we saw no more towns, only crossroads stores; rich valleys separated by heavily wooded hills; herds of cattle and widely spaced farm houses. We had nosed our way into the foothills of the Olympics while we were still in the farming country and it wasn't until I looked from the car window and saw, far below the road, a frustrated little mountain stream banging its head against immense canyon walls that I realized that we were in the mountains proper.

Yellow highway signs announcing Winding Road appeared at intervals and Bob put the car in second and then low gear as we spiraled forward and upward.

The Grammar of English Grammars/Part II

We were climbing but seemed to be getting nowhere for we were walled in on all sides by the robust green mountainsides and only by sticking my head clear out of the window was I able to peer up and see the sky. Two or three hundred million board feet of Douglas fir. Later, we turned off the main highway onto a dirt road and jounced and skidded our way at last to the "little place. On first sight it looked distressingly forlorn, huddled there in the laps of the great Olympics, the buildings grayed with weather, the orchard overgrown with second-growth firs, the fences collapsing, the windows gaping.

It was the little old deserted farm that people point at from car windows, saying, "Look at that picturesque old place! Bob halted the car to take down the 46 rails of the gate and I looked morosely around at the mountains so imminent they gave me a feeling of someone reading over my shoulder, and at the terrific virility of the forests, and I thought, "Good heavens, those mountains could flick us off this place like a fly off their skirts, rearrange their trees a little and no one would ever be the wiser.

Heavy green branches lashed the top of the car and smaller twigs clawed at the windows and the car wheels churned and complained on the slick dry needles. We drove for perhaps a quarter of a mile like this and then abruptly the trees stopped and we were in the dooryard of the farm, where a great-grandfather of a cherry tree, hoary with bloom, stood guard over the huddled buildings. I'm not sure whether it was the cherry tree or the purple carpet of sweet violets flanking the funny silvery woodshed, or the fact that the place was so clean, not a scrap of rubbish, not a single tin can, but it suddenly lost its sinister deserted look and began to appear lonely but eager to make friends.

A responsive little farm that with a few kindnesses in the way of windows and paint and clearing might soon be licking our hands. While I stood in the dooryard "feeling" the place, Bob was bounding around with a hammer, pounding the walls and calling happily, "Look, Betty, hand-hewn-out-of-cedar logs, and sound as a nut.

The house, evidently begun as a log cabin about twenty feet by twenty and added on to at either end, was beautifully situated on a small rise of ground from which an old orchard, peering out from the second-growth fir, sloped gently down 47 to a small lake or large pond. The original cabin was the living room with windows on the north and south sides and a thin rickety porch across the front. It faced south, across the orchard, to the pond and of course the mountains. The mountains were everywhere—I'd start to turn around, come up against something large and solid and wham! Opening off the living room on the right, with windows north, west and south, we found a bedroom with roses and honeysuckle vines in heaps on the floor below the windows, as though they had climbed up to peek in and had fallen over the sills.

Down three steps and to the left of the living room were an enormous square kitchen with windows east and north and a pantry the size of our apartment in town, with three windows facing east. Jutting off the kitchen toward the front was a bedroom with windows looking east and south. Up a creepy flight of stairs from the living room were two tiny slope-ceilinged bedrooms. Under the front porch we discovered a bat-hung cellar, and to one side of the kitchen, forming an ell with the living room, an entryway and wood room.

A very large, very surly and slightly rusty range was backed defiantly against the north wall of the kitchen—otherwise the place was empty. The floors were warped and splintery—the walls were covered with carefully tacked newspapers dated At first glance the outbuildings seemed frail and useless, but closer examination revealed fine bone structure in the way of uprights, beams and stringers and so we were able to include in the assets of the place, a very large barn, two small chicken houses, a woodshed and an outhouse. The assets also included ten acres of land showing evidences of having once been cleared, and thirty acres of virgin timber, cedar, fir and hemlock—some of it seven feet and more in diameter.

Scat 48 tered over the ten cleared acres, like figures in a tableau, were the dearest, fattest, most perfectly shaped Christmas trees I have ever seen.

THE EGG AND I

Each one was round and full at the bottom and exquisitely trimmed with brown cones. I was caressing and exclaiming over these when Bob told me that such little jewels of trees are cut by the hundreds of thousands by Christmas tree dealers, who pay the farmers two cents each for them. Incredible that anyone who professed a love of the soil would sanction such vandalism and for such a paltry fee. At the edge of the clearing and sheltered by one of the great black firs, we found an old well. It was half full of water, but the intake was a tiny trickle instead of a robust gush which this season warranted, so Bob decided it had been abandoned and we looked elsewhere for water.

We found a larger, more substantial spring at the foot of the orchard, feeding the lake, but as it had not been boxed in and showed no other signs of use, either it was a thing of recent origin or suffered from summer complaint—time would tell. It did too, and water became one of the major obsessions of my life. We threaded our way through the orchard and found slender fruit trees bravely blossoming with frail hands pushing futilely against the dark green hairy chests of the invading firs.

The firs were everywhere, big and virile, with their strong roots pulling all of the vitality out of the soil and leaving the poor little fruit trees only enough food and light to keep an occasional branch alive. These were no kin to the neatly spaced little Christmas tree ladies of the back pasture. These were fierce invaders.

The more we walked around, the stronger became my feeling that we should hurry and move in so that we could help this little farm in its fight against the wilderness. Bob was overjoyed when I told him of this feeling and so we decided to buy it at once. For the forty acres, the six-room log house, the barn, two small chicken houses, woodshed, outhouse and the sulky stove, the mortgage company was asking four hundred and fifty dollars.

Between us and by pooling all savings accounts, wedding present, birthday presents and by drawing on a small legacy which I was to get when I became twenty-one we had fifteen hundred dollars. We sat in the sunny doorway under the cherry tree, used a blue carpenter's pencil and shingle and decided that we would pay cash for the farm; put seven hundred dollars in the bank to be used to buy, feed and raise three hundred and fifty pullets; and we would use the rest to fix up the buildings.

Fuel and water were free and we'd have a large vegetable garden, a pig to eat leavings, a few chickens for immediate eggs and Bob could work occasionally in one of the sawmills to eke out until the chickens started to lay. Written out in blue pencil on the weathered shingle it was the simplest, most delightful design for living ever devised for two people.

We left then and hurried home to put our plans into action. The following week we borrowed a truck, loaded on everything we possessed and left for the mountains to dive headfirst into the chicken business. I'm sure you're not competent but you're the best help I can get at present," and Bob laughed callously. Run into the house and get those nails. Help me peel this stringer. Hurry with those shakes. Put your weight on this crowbar. Stain that floor while I lay this one.

You don't measure windows that way, bonehead. Run down and get a couple of buckets of water. It's time to fill the baby chicks' water jugs. Bring me some of those two-by-fours. Cut me about twenty-five more shakes. Don't be such a baby, bring them up here. I'm not climbing down from this roof everytime I want a nail. And that's the way it went that first spring and summer. I alternated between delirious happiness and black despair.

I was willing but pitifully unskilled. He was quick, neat, well-ordered and thorough. My efforts were more like shrapnel—nicest where they didn't hit. Bob pounded nails with a very few, swift, sure strokes, right smack on the head. I always tried to force my nails in sideways and my best efforts look hand adzed. Bob sawed lightly, quickly and on the line.

Zzzzzzzz—snap and the board was through with the sawdust in orderly little heaps on either side. My saw rippled in, was dragged out, squealed back and when I got through Bob said, "How in God's name did you get that scallop in there? The first day we moved all of the furniture into the house and I thought that the next day we would start putting in windows, laying new floors, painting woodwork and sheathing 52 the walls. The next day we started building a brooder house because to get started with the baby chickens was the important thing.

Bob cut the log stringers about twenty-five feet from the building site, hauled the rest of the lumber from the mill and I split the shakes with a dull chipped frow and many vigorous curses. I, who is the person speaking ; 2d thou, who is spoken to; 3d he, she , or it, who is spoken of, and their plurals, we, ye or you, they.

Here the two kinds of error which I have just pointed out, are jumbled together. It is impossible to write worse English than this! Nor is the following much better: I , in the first person, speaking; Thou , in the second person, spoken to; and He, she, it , in the third person, spoken of. This exception takes place more particularly in the writing of dialogues and dramas; in which the first and second persons are abundantly used, not as the representatives of the author and his reader, but as denoting the fictitious speakers and hearers that figure in each scene. But, in discourse, the grammatical persons may be changed without a change of the living subject.

In the following sentence, the three grammatical persons are all of them used with reference to one and the same individual: Consequently, nouns are rarely used in the first person; and when they do assume this relation, a pronoun is commonly associated with them: But some grammarians deny the first person to nouns altogether; others, with much more consistency, ascribe it;[] while very many are entirely silent on the subject.

Yet it is plain that both the doctrine of concords, and the analogy of general grammar, require its admission. The reason of this may be seen in the following examples: Again, if the word God is of the second person, in the text, " Thou, God , seest me," why should any one deny that Paul is of the first person, in this one? And so of the plural: How can it be pretended, that, in the phrase, " I Paul ," I is of the first person, as denoting the speaker, and Paul , of some other person, as denoting something or somebody that is not the speaker?

Let the admirers of Murray, Kirkham, Ingersoll, R. Smith, Comly, Greenleaf, Parkhurst, or of any others who teach this absurdity, answer. In the following example, the patriarch Jacob uses both forms; applying the term servant to himself, and to his brother Esau the term lord: For when a speaker or writer does not choose to declare himself in the first person, or to address his hearer or reader in the second , he speaks of both or either in the third. So Judah humbly beseeches Joseph: And Abraham reverently intercedes with God: And the Psalmist prays: So, on more common occasions: Ye mountains , that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills , like lambs?

Tremble, thou earth , at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob. The plural number is that which denotes more than one; as, "The boys learn. The plural number of nouns is regularly formed by adding s or es to the singular: When the singular ends in a sound which will unite with that of s , the plural is generally formed by adding s only , and the number of syllables is not increased: But when the sound of s cannot be united with that of the primitive word, the regular plural adds s to final e , and es to other terminations, and forms a separate syllable: In some languages, as the Greek and the Arabic, there is a dual number, which denotes two , or a pair ; but in ours, this property of words, or class of modifications, extends no farther than to distinguish unity from plurality, and plurality from unity.

It belongs to nouns, pronouns, and finite verbs; and to these it is always applied, either by peculiarity of form, or by inference from the principles of concord. Pronouns are like their antecedents, and verbs are like their subjects, in number. The terminations which always make the regular plural in es , with increase of syllables, are twelve; namely, ce, ge, ch soft, che soft, sh, ss, s, se, x, xe, z , and ze: All other endings readily unite in sound either with the sharp or with the flat s , as they themselves are sharp or flat; and, to avoid an increase of syllables, we allow the final e mute to remain mute after that letter is added: In some instances, however, usage is various in writing, though uniform in speech; an unsettlement peculiar to certain words that terminate in vowels: There are also some other difficulties respecting the plurals of nouns, and especially respecting those of foreign words; of compound terms; of names and titles; and of words redundant or deficient in regard to the numbers.

What is most worthy of notice, respecting all these puzzling points of English grammar, is briefly contained in the following observations. To this rule, the plurals of words ending in quy , as alloquies, colloquies, obloquies, soliloquies , are commonly made exceptions; because many have conceived that the u , in such instances, is a mere appendage to the q , or is a consonant having the power of w , and not a vowel forming a diphthong with the y. See Rule 12th for Spelling.

So nouns in i , so far as we have any that are susceptible of a change of number, form the plural regularly by assuming es: Common nouns ending in y preceded by a consonant, are numerous; and none of them deviate from the foregoing rule of forming the plural: The termination added is es , and the y is changed into i , according to the general principle expressed in Rule 11th for Spelling. But, to this principle, or rule, some writers have supposed that proper nouns were to be accounted exceptions.

And accordingly we sometimes find such names made plural by the mere addition of an s ; as, "How come the Pythagoras' , [it should be, the Pythagorases ,] the Aristotles , the Tullys , the Livys , to appear, even to us at this distance, as stars of the first magnitude in the vast fields of ether? This doctrine, adopted from some of our older grammars, I was myself, at one period, inclined to countenance; see Institutes of English Grammar , p.

To pronounce the final a flat, as Africay for Africa , is a mark of vulgar ignorance. This class of words being anomalous in respect to pronunciation, some authors have attempted to reform them, by changing the e to y in the singular, and writing ies for the plural: A reformation of some sort seems desirable here, and this has the advantage of being first proposed; but it is not extensively adopted, and perhaps never will be; for the vowel sound in question, is not exactly that of the terminations y and ies , but one which seems to require ee --a stronger sound than that of y , though similar to it.

In words of this class, the e appears to be useful as a means of preserving the right sound of the o ; consequently, such of them as are the most frequently used, have become the most firmly fixed in this orthography. In practice, however, we find many similar nouns very frequently, if not uniformly, written with s only; as, cantos, juntos, grottos, solos, quartos, octavos, duodecimos, tyros. So that even the best scholars seem to have frequently doubted which termination they ought to regard as the regular one.

The whole class includes more than one hundred words. Some, however, are seldom used in the plural; and others, never. Wo and potato are sometimes written woe and potatoe. This may have sprung from a notion, that such as have the e in the plural, should have it also in the singular. But this principle has never been carried out; and, being repugnant to derivation, it probably never will be.

The only English appellatives that are established in oe , are the following fourteen: The last is pronounced dip'-lo-e by Worcester; but Webster, Bolles, and some others, give it as a word of two syllables only. Nay, for lack of a rule to guide his pen, even Johnson himself could not remember the orthography of the common word mangoes well enough to copy it twice without inconsistency.

This may be seen by his example from King, under the words mango and potargo. Since, therefore, either termination is preferable to the uncertainty which must attend a division of this class of words between the two; and since es has some claim to the preference, as being a better index to the sound; I shall make no exceptions to the principle, that common nouns ending in o preceded by a consonant take es for the plural.

Murray says, " Nouns which end in o have sometimes es added, to form the plural; as, cargo, echo, hero, negro, manifesto, potato, volcano, wo: This amounts to nothing, unless it is to be inferred from his examples , that others like them in form are to take s or es accordingly; and this is what I teach, though it cannot be said that Murray maintains the principle. These, however, may still be called proper nouns , in parsing; because they are only inflections, peculiarly applied, of certain names which are indisputably such.

So likewise when such nouns are used to denote character: The proper names of nations, tribes , and societies , are generally plural; and, except in a direct address, they are usually construed with the definite article: And those which are only or chiefly plural, have, or ought to have, such terminations as are proper to distinguish them as plurals, so that the form for the singular may be inferred: Here the singular must certainly be a Tungoose. Here the singulars may be supposed to be a Pawnee , an Arrapaho , and a Cumanche. Here all are regular plurals, except the last; and this probably ought to be Natchezes , but Jefferson spells it Natches , the singular of which I do not know.

Sometimes foreign words or foreign terminations have been improperly preferred to our own; which last are more intelligible, and therefore better: As any vowel sound may be uttered with an s , many writers suppose these letters to require for plurals strictly regular, the s only; and to take es occasionally, by way of exception. Others, perhaps with more reason, assume, that the most usual, regular, and proper endings for the plural, in these instances, are ies, oes, and ues: This, I think, is right for common nouns.

How far proper names are to be made exceptions, because they are proper names, is an other question. It is certain that some of them are not to be excepted: So the names of tribes; as, The Missouries , the Otoes , the Winnebagoes. Likewise, the houries and the harpies ; which words, though not strictly proper names, are often written with a capital as such. Like these are rabbies, cadies, mufties, sophies , from which some writers omit the e. Johnson, Walker, and others, write gipsy and gipsies ; Webster, now writes Gipsey and Gipseys ; Worcester prefers Gypsy , and probably Gypsies: Webster once wrote the plural gypsies ; see his Essays , p.

Yet there seems to be the same reason for inserting the e in these, as in other nouns of the same ending; namely, to prevent the o from acquiring a short sound. Harris says very properly, 'We have our Marks and our Antonies: Whatever may have been the motive for it, such a use of the apostrophe is a gross impropriety.

The word India , commonly makes the plural Indies , not Indias ; and, for Ajaxes , the poets write Ajaces. For example--in speaking of two young ladies whose family name is Bell--whether to call them the Miss Bells , the Misses Bell , or the Misses Bells. To an inquiry on this point, a learned editor, who prefers the last, lately gave his answer thus: This puts the words in apposition; and there is no question, that it is formally correct.

But still it is less agreeable to the ear, less frequently heard, and less approved by grammarians, than the first phrase; which, if we may be allowed to assume that the two words may be taken together as a sort of compound, is correct also. The following quotations show the opinions of some other grammarians: The foregoing opinion from Crombie, is quoted and seconded by Maunder, who adds the following examples: Stone, the editor above quoted, nor would his reasoning apply well to several of their examples.

Yet both opinions are right, if neither be carried too far. For when the words are in apposition, rather than in composition, the first name or title must be made plural, if it refers to more than one: Nor is that which varies the first only, to be altogether condemned, though Dr.

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Priestley is unquestionably wrong respecting the " strict analogy " of which he speaks. The joining of a plural title to one singular noun, as, " Misses Roy ,"--" The Misses Bell ,"--" The two Misses Thomson ," produces a phrase which is in itself the least analogous of the three; but, " The Misses Jane and Eliza Bell ," is a phrase which nobody perhaps will undertake to amend.

It appears, then, that each of these forms of expression may be right in some cases; and each of them may be wrong, if improperly substituted for either of the others. Sells; the two Miss Browns ; or, without the numeral, the Miss Roys. But in addressing letters in which both or all are equally concerned, and also when the names are different, we pluralize the title , Mr. If we wish to distinguish these Misses from other Misses, we call them the Misses Howard. The elliptical meaning is, the Misses and Messrs, who are named Story.

To distinguish unmarried from married ladies, the proper name , and not the title , should be varied; as, the Miss Clarks. When we mention more than one person of different names, the title should be expressed before each; as, Miss Burns, Miss Parker, and Miss Hopkinson, were present. In the following examples from Pope's Works, the last word only is varied: Three others in fe are similar: These are specific exceptions to the general rule for plurals, and not a series of examples coming under a particular rule; for, contrary to the instructions of nearly all our grammarians, there are more than twice as many words of the same endings, which take s only: The plural of wharf is sometimes written wharves ; but perhaps as frequently, and, if so, more accurately, wharfs.

Nouns in ff take s only; as, skiffs, stuffs, gaffs. But the plural of staff has hitherto been generally written staves ; a puzzling and useless anomaly, both in form and sound: Staffs is now sometimes used; as, "I saw the husbandmen bending over their staffs. In one instance, I observe, a very excellent scholar has written selfs for selves , but the latter is the established plural of self:.

The word brethren is now applied only to fellow-members of the same church or fraternity; for sons of the same parents we always use brothers ; and this form is sometimes employed in the other sense. Dice are spotted cubes for gaming; dies are stamps for coining money, or for impressing metals. Pence , as six pence , refers to the amount of money in value; pennies denotes the corns themselves.

This last anomaly, I think, might well enough "be spared; the sound of the word being the same, and the distinction to the eye not always regarded. In this way, these irregularities extend to many words; though some of the metaphorical class, as kite's-foot, colts-foot, bear's-foot, lion's-foot , being names of plants, have no plural. The word man , which is used the most frequently in this way, makes more than seventy such compounds. But there are some words of this ending, which, not being compounds of man , are regular: Thus we write fathers-in-law, sons-in-law, knights-errant, courts-martial, cousins-german, hangers-on, comings-in, goings-out, goings-forth , varying the first; and manhaters, manstealers, manslayers, maneaters, mandrills, handfuls, spoonfuls, mouthfuls, pailfuls, outpourings, ingatherings, downsittings, overflowings , varying the last.

So, in many instances, when there is a less intimate connexion of the parts, and the words are written with a hyphen, if not separately, we choose to vary the latter or last: The following mode of writing is irregular in two respects; first, because the words are separated, and secondly, because both are varied: Liberator , ix, According to analogy, it ought to be: Wright alleges, that, "The phrase, 'I want two spoonfuls or handfuls ,' though common, is improperly constructed;" and that, "we should say, 'Two spoons or hands full. From this opinion, I dissent: Of the propriety of this, the reader may judge, when I shall have quoted a few examples: Such terms as these, if thought objectionable, may easily be avoided, by substituting for the former part of the compound the separate adjective male or female ; as, male child, male children.

Or, for those of the third example, one might say, " singing men and singing women ," as in Nehemiah , vii, 67; for, in the ancient languages, the words are the same. Alger compounds " singing-men and singing-women. But, in all such cases, I think the hyphen should be inserted in the compound, though it is the practice of many to omit it. Of this odd sort of words, I quote the following examples from Churchill; taking the liberty to insert the hyphen, which he omits: For, as there ought to be no word, or inflection of a word, for which we cannot conceive an appropriate meaning or use, it follows that whatever is of such a species that it cannot be taken in any plural sense, must naturally be named by a word which is singular only: But there are some things, which have in fact neither a comprehensible unity, nor any distinguishable plurality, and which may therefore be spoken of in either number; for the distinction of unity and plurality is, in such instances, merely verbal; and, whichever number we take, the word will be apt to want the other: It is necessary that every noun should be understood to be of one number or the other; for, in connecting it with a verb, or in supplying its place by a pronoun, we must assume it to be either singular or plural.

And it is desirable that singulars and plurals should always abide by their appropriate forms, so that they may be thereby distinguished with readiness. But custom, which regulates this, as every thing else of the like nature, does not always adjust it well; or, at least, not always upon principles uniform in themselves and obvious to every intellect. Thus, a council , a committee , a jury , a meeting , a society , a flock , or a herd , is singular; and the regular plurals are councils, committees, juries, meetings, societies, flocks, herds.

But these, and many similar words, may be taken plurally without the s , because a collective noun is the name of many individuals together. Hence we may say, "The council were unanimous. Where a purer concord can be effected, it may be well to avoid such a construction, though examples like it are not uncommon: Thus, cattle , for beasts of pasture, and pulse , for peas and beans, though in appearance singulars only, are generally, if not always, plural; and summons, gallows, chintz, series, superficies, molasses, suds, hunks, jakes, trapes , and corps , with the appearance of plurals, are generally, if not always, singular.

Webster says that cattle is of both numbers; but wherein the oneness of cattle can consist, I know not. The Bible says, "God made-- cattle after their kind. Here kind is indeed singular, as if cattle were a natural genus of which one must be a cattle ; as sheep are a natural genus of which one is a sheep: Gillies says, in his History of Greece, " cattle was regarded as the most convenient measure of value. Sheep is not singular, unless limited to that number by some definitive word; and cattle I conceive to be incapable of any such limitation. Summonses is given in Cobb's Dictionary as the plural of summons ; but some authors have used the latter with a plural verb: Johnson says this noun is from the verb to summon ; and, if this is its origin, the singular ought to be a summon , and then summons would be a regular plural.

But this "singular noun with a plural termination," as Webster describes it, more probably originated from the Latin verb submoneas , used in the writ, and came to us through the jargon of law, in which we sometimes hear men talk of " summonsing witnesses. Chints is called by Cobb a "substantive plural " and defined as "cotton cloths , made in India;" but other lexicographers define it as singular, and Worcester perhaps more properly writes it chintz.

Johnson cites Pope as speaking of " a charming chints ," and I have somewhere seen the plural formed by adding es. Walker, in his Elements of Elocution, makes frequent use of the word " serieses ," and of the phrase " series of serieses. This, however, is no rule for writing English. Blair has used the word species in a plural sense; though I think he ought rather to have preferred the regular English word kinds: Specie , meaning hard money, though derived or corrupted from species , is not the singular of that word; nor has it any occasion for a plural form, because we never speak of a specie.

The plural of gallows , according to Dr. Webster, is gallowses ; nor is that form without other authority, though some say, gallows is of both numbers and not to be varied: Some nouns, because they signify such things as nature or art has made plural or double; some, because they have been formed from other parts of speech by means of the plural ending which belongs to nouns; and some, because they are compounds in which a plural word is principal, and put last, are commonly used in the plural number only, and have, in strict propriety, no singular.

Though these three classes of plurals may not be perfectly separable, I shall endeavour to exhibit them in the order of this explanation. Plurals in meaning and form: Plurals by formation, derived chiefly from adjectives: To these may be added the Latin words, aborigines, antipodes, antes, antoeci, amphiscii, anthropophagi, antiscii, ascii, literati, fauces, regalia , and credenda , with the Italian vermicelli , and the French belles-lettres and entremets.

Of this class are the following: The fact is, that these words have, or ought to have, the singular, as often as there is any occasion to use it; and the same may, in general terms, be said of other nouns, respecting the formation of the plural. But the nature of a mass, or of an indefinite multitude taken collectively, is not found in individuals as such; nor is the name, whether singular, as gold , or plural, as ashes , so understood. Hence, though every noun must be of one number or the other, there are many which have little or no need of both.

Thus we commonly speak of wheat, barley, or oats , collectively; and very seldom find occasion for any other forms of these words. But chafferers at the corn-market, in spite of Cobbett,[] will talk about wheats and barleys , meaning different kinds[] or qualities; and a gardener, if he pleases, will tell of an oat , as does Milton, in his Lycidas, meaning a single seed or plant. But, because wheat or barley generally means that sort of grain in mass, if he will mention a single kernel, he must call it a grain of wheat or a barleycorn.

And these he may readily make plural, to specify any particular number; as, five grains of wheat , or three barleycorns. The word amends is represented by Murray and others, as being singular as well as plural; but Webster's late dictionaries exhibit amend as singular, and amends as plural, with definitions that needlessly differ, though not much.

I judge " an amends " to be bad English; and prefer the regular singular, an amend. The word is of French origin, and is sometimes written in English with a needless final e ; as, "But only to make a kind of honourable amende to God. The word remains Dr. Webster puts down as plural only, and yet uses it himself in the singular: There are also other authorities for this usage, and also for some other nouns that are commonly thought to have no singular; as, "But Duelling is unlawful and murderous, a remain of the ancient Gothic barbarity.

It is some poor fragment, some slender ort of his remainder. Thus, deer, folk, fry, gentry, grouse, hose, neat, sheep, swine, vermin , and rest , i. Again, alms, aloes, bellows, means, news, odds, shambles , and species , are proper plurals, but most of them are oftener construed as singulars. Folk and fry are collective nouns.

Folk means people ; a folk, a people: Folks , which ought to be the plural of folk , and equivalent to peoples , is now used with reference to a plurality of individuals, and the collective word seems liable to be entirely superseded by it. A fry is a swarm of young fishes, or of any other little creatures living in water: Several such swarms might properly be called fries ; but this form can never be applied to the individuals, without interfering with the other.

Formerly, the plural was hosen: Of sheep , Shakspeare has used the regular plural: Thus means is the regular plural of mean ; and, when the word is put for mediocrity, middle point, place, or degree, it takes both forms, each in its proper sense; but when it signifies things instrumental, or that which is used to effect an object, most writers use means for the singular as well as for the plural: Johnson says the use of means for mean is not very grammatical; and, among his examples for the true use of the word, he has the following: Lowth also questioned the propriety of construing means as singular, and referred to these same authors as authorities for preferring the regular form.

Buchanan insists that means is right in the plural only; and that, "The singular should be used as perfectly analogous; by this mean , by that mean. Lord Kames, likewise, appears by his practice to have been of the same opinion: Caleb Alexander, too, declares " this means ," " that means.

But common usage has gone against the suggestions of these critics, and later grammarians have rather confirmed the irregularity, than attempted to reform it. Principle is for the regular word mean , and good practice favours the irregularity, but is still divided. Cobbett, to the disgrace of grammar, says, " Mean , as a noun, is never used in the singular. It, like some other words, has broken loose from all principle and rule. By universal consent, it is become always a plural , whether used with singular or plural pronouns and articles, or not.

This is as ungrammatical, as it is untrue. Both mean and means are sufficiently authorized in the singular: Chalmers, Sermons , p. Adams's Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory , i, Thus manner makes the plural manners , which last is now generally used in the peculiar sense of behaviour, or deportment, but not always: But manner has often been put for sorts , without the s ; as, "The tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits.

Milton used kind in the same way, but not very properly; as, " All kind of living creatures. This irregularity it would be well to avoid. Manners may still, perhaps, be proper for modes or ways; and all manner , if allowed, must be taken in the sense of a collective noun; but for sorts, kinds, classes, or species, I would use neither the plural nor the singular of this word.

The word heathen , too, makes the regular plural heathens , and yet is often used in a plural sense without the s ; as, "Why do the heathen rage? The word youth , likewise, has the same peculiarities. Hence some grammarians affirm, that salmon, mackerel, herring, perch, tench , and several others, are alike in both numbers, and ought never to be used in the plural form.

I am not so fond of honouring these anomalies. Usage is here as unsettled, as it is arbitrary; and, if the expression of plurality is to be limited to either form exclusively, the regular plural ought certainly to be preferred. But, for fish taken in bulk , the singular form seems more appropriate; as, "These vessels take from thirty-eight to forty-five quintals of cod and pollock , and six thousand barrels of mackerel , yearly.

In quoting, at second-hand, I generally think it proper to make double references; and especially in citing authorities after Johnson, because he so often gives the same passages variously. But he himself is reckoned good authority in things literary. I regret the many proofs of his fallibility. The quantity of ; as, a mease of herrings. Gay has improperly mackarels. It is noted that roaches recover strength and grow a fortnight after spawning. There are also other nouns in which a like difference may be observed. Some names of building materials, as brick, stone, plank, joist , though not destitute of regular plurals, as bricks, stones, planks, joists , and not unadapted to ideas distinctly singular, as a brick, a stone, a plank, a joist , are nevertheless sometimes used in a plural sense without the s , and sometimes in a sense which seems hardly to embrace the idea of either number; as, "Let us make brick , and burn them thoroughly.

The same variety of usage occurs in respect to a few other words, and sometimes perhaps without good reason; as, "Vast numbers of sea fowl frequent the rocky cliffs. Our writers have laid many languages under contribution, and thus furnished an abundance of irregular words, necessary to be explained, but never to be acknowledged as English till they conform to our own rules. Dogma makes dogmas or dogmata ; exanthema, exanthemas or exanthemata ; miasm or miasma, miasms or miasmata ; stigma, stigmas or stigmata. Of nouns in um , some have no need of the plural; as, bdellium, decorum, elysium, equilibrium, guaiacum, laudanum, odium, opium, petroleum, serum, viaticum.

Some form it regularly; as, asylums, compendiums, craniums, emporiums, encomiums, forums, frustums, lustrums, mausoleums, museums, pendulums, nostrums, rostrums, residuums, vacuums. Others take either the English or the Latin plural; as, desideratums or desiderata, mediums or media, menstruums or menstrua, memorandums or memoranda, spectrums or spectra, speculums or specula, stratums or strata, succedaneums or succedanea, trapeziums or trapezia, vinculums or vincula.

A few seem to have the Latin plural only: Of nouns in us , a few have no plural; as, asparagus, calamus, mucus. Some have only the Latin plural, which usually changes us to i ; as, alumnus, alumni; androgynus, androgyni; calculus, calculi; dracunculus, dracunculi; echinus, echini; magus, magi.

But such as have properly become English words, may form the plural regularly in es ; as, chorus, choruses: Five of these make the Latin plural like the singular; but the mere English scholar has no occasion to be told which they are. Radius makes the plural radii or radiuses. Genius has genii , for imaginary spirits, and geniuses , for men of wit.

Genus , a sort, becomes genera in Latin, and genuses in English. Denarius makes, in the plural, denarii or denariuses. Of nouns in is , some are regular; as, trellis, trellises: Some seem to have no need of the plural; as, ambergris, aqua-fortis, arthritis, brewis, crasis, elephantiasis, genesis, orris, siriasis, tennis. So iris and proboscis , which we make regular; and perhaps some of the foregoing may be made so too. Fisher writes Praxises for praxes , though not very properly.

See his Gram , p. Eques , a Roman knight, makes equites in the plural. Of nouns in x , there are few, if any, which ought not to form the plural regularly, when used as English words; though the Latins changed x to ces , and ex to ices , making the i sometimes long and sometimes short: Some Greek words in x change that letter to ges ; as, larynx, larynges , for larinxes; phalanx, phalanges , for phalanxes.

Billet-doux , from the French, is billets-doux in the plural. Of nouns in on , derived from Greek, the greater part always form the plural regularly; as, etymons, gnomons, ichneumons, myrmidons, phlegmons, trigons, tetragons, pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, octagons, enneagons, decagons, hendecagons, dodecagons, polygons. For a few words of this class, however, there are double plurals in use; as, automata or atomatons, criteria or criterions, parhelia or parhelions ; and the plural of phenomenon appears to be always phenomena.

The plural of legumen is legumens or legumina ; of stamen, stamens or stamina: The regular forms are in general preferable. The Hebrew plurals cherubim and seraphim , being sometimes mistaken for singulars, other plurals have been formed from them; as, "And over it the cherubims of glory. The former suits better the familiar, the latter the solemn style.

I shall add to this remark," says he, "that, as the words cherubim and seraphim are plural, the terms cherubims and seraphims , as expressing the plural, are quite improper. The masculine gender is that which denotes persons or animals of the male kind; as, man, father, king. The feminine gender is that which denotes persons or animals of the female kind; as, woman, mother, queen. The neuter gender is that which denotes things that are neither male nor female; as, pen, ink, paper. Hence, names of males are masculine; names of females, feminine; and names of things inanimate, literally, neuter.

Masculine nouns make regular feminines, when their termination is changed to ess: In English, they belong only to nouns and pronouns; and to these they are usually applied, not arbitrarily, as in some other languages, but agreeably to the order of nature. From this we derive a very striking advantage over those who use the gender differently, or without such rule; which is, that our pronouns are easy of application, and have a fine effect when objects are personified. Pronouns are of the same gender as the nouns for which they stand.

The gender of these is usually determined by the context; and they are to be called masculine or feminine accordingly. To such words, some grammarians have applied the unnecessary and improper term common gender. Murray justly observes, "There is no such gender belonging to the language. The business of parsing can be effectually performed, without having recourse to a common gender. The term is more useful, and less liable to objection, as applied to the learned languages; but with us, whose genders distinguish objects in regard to sex , it is plainly a solecism.

These views of the matter are obviously inconsistent. Not genders, or a gender, do the writers undertake to define, but "gender" as a whole; and absurdly enough, too; because this whole of gender they immediately distribute into certain other genders , into genders of gender, or kinds of gender, and these not compatible with their definition. There are four genders;--the masculine , the feminine , the common , and the neuter.

This then is manifestly no gender under the foregoing definition, and the term neuter is made somewhat less appropriate by the adoption of a third denomination before it. Nor is there less absurdity in the phraseology with which Murray proposes to avoid the recognition of the common gender: According to this, we must have five genders , exclusive of that which is called common ; namely, the masculine , the feminine , the neuter , the androgynal , and the doubtful.

Some of them, confounding gender with sex, deny that there are more than two genders, because there are only two sexes. Others, under a like mistake, resort occasionally, as in the foregoing instance, to an androgynal , and also to a doubtful gender: I assume, that there are in English the three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, and no more; and that every noun and every pronoun must needs be of some gender; consequently, of some one of these three.

A gender is, literally, a sort, a kind, a sex. But genders, in grammar , are attributes of words, rather than of persons, or animals, or things; whereas sexes are attributes, not of words, but of living creatures. He who understands this, will perceive that the absence of sex in some things, is as good a basis for a grammatical distinction, as the presence or the difference of it in others; nor can it be denied, that the neuter, according to my definition, is a gender, is a distinction "in regard to sex," though it does not embrace either of the sexes.

There are therefore three genders, and only three. Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? These were called, by the old grammarians, epicene nouns--that is, supercommon ; but they are to be parsed each according to the gender of the pronoun which is put for it. Those terms which are equally applicable to both sexes, if they are not expressly applied to females, and those plurals which are known to include both sexes, should be called masculine in parsing; for, in all languages, the masculine gender is considered the most worthy,[] and is generally employed when both sexes are included under one common term.

Thus parents is always masculine, and must be represented by a masculine pronoun, for the gender of a word is a property indivisible, and that which refers to the male sex, always takes the lead in such cases. If one say, "Joseph took the young child and his mother by night, and fled with them into Egypt," the pronoun them will be masculine; but let " his " be changed to its , and the plural pronoun that follows, will be feminine. For the feminine gender takes precedence of the neuter, but not of the masculine; and it is not improper to speak of a young child without designating the sex.

As for such singulars as parent, friend, neighbour, thief, slave , and many others, they are feminine when expressly applied to any of the female sex; but otherwise, masculine.