English as She is Taught Page #2

								


  Sibilant, the state of being idiotic.

  Crosier, a staff carried by the Deity.

In the following sentences the pupil’s ear has been deceiving him again:

  The marriage was illegible.

  He was totally dismasted with the whole performance.

  He enjoys riding on a philosopher.

  She was very quick at repertoire.

  He prayed for the waters to subsidize.

  The leopard is watching his sheep.

  They had a strawberry vestibule.

Here is one which—well, now, how often we do slam right into the truth without ever suspecting it:

  The men employed by the Gas Company go round and speculate the
  meter.

Indeed they do, dear; and when you grow up, many and many’s the time you will notice it in the gas bill. In the following sentences the little people have some information to convey, every time; but in my case they failed to connect: the light always went out on the keystone word:

  The coercion of some things is remarkable; as bread and molasses.

  Her hat is contiguous because she wears it on one side.

  He preached to an egregious congregation.

  The captain eliminated a bullet through the man’s heart.

  You should take caution and be precarious.

  The supercilious girl acted with vicissitude when the perennial time
  came.

That last is a curiously plausible sentence; one seems to know what it means, and yet he knows all the time that he doesn’t. Here is an odd (but entirely proper) use of a word, and a most sudden descent from a lofty philosophical altitude to a very practical and homely illustration:

  He should endeavour to avoid extremes—like those of wasps and bees.

And here—with “zo� logical” and “geological” in his mind, but not ready to his tongue—the small scholar has innocently gone and let out a couple of secrets which ought never to have been divulged in any circumstances:

  There are a good many donkeys in theological gardens.

  Some of the best fossils are found in theological cabinets.

Under the head of “Grammar” the little scholars furnish the following information:

  Gender is the distinguishing nouns without regard to sex.

  A verb is something to eat.

  Adverbs should always be used as adjectives and adjectives as
  adverbs.

  Every sentence and name of God must begin with a caterpillar.

“Caterpillar” is well enough, but capital letter would have been stricter. The following is a brave attempt at a solution, but it failed to liquify:

  When they are going to say some prose or poetry before they say the
  poetry or prose they must put a semicolon just after the
  introduction of the prose or poetry.

The chapter on “Mathematics” is full of fruit. From it I take a few samples—mainly in an unripe state.

  A straight line is any distance between two places.

  Parallel lines are lines that can never meet until they run
  together.

  A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle.

  Things which are equal to each other are equal to anything else.

  To find the number of square feet in a room you multiply the room by
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