36 



THE POPULAE EDUCATOE. 



link. The term describes its office. The word is in the 

 sentence links the subject with the predicate. The whole may 

 be exhibited thus : 



Subject. 

 Alfred 



Alfred 



Predicate. 

 reads. 



Copula. 



By ordinary grammarians what we have termed the subject is 

 called the nominative case. The employment of such a term is 

 objectionable, for it is incorrect by not being sufficiently com- 

 prehensive. Take, for instance, the proposition, To ride is 

 healthful. To ride is the subject of the proposition, and the 

 subject, therefore, to the verb is. But is to ride a nominative 

 case ? Ask the grammarians, and they will tell you that it is 

 the infinitive mood of the verb ride. If an infinitive mood, it 



is not a nominative case. Cases pertain to nouns, moods to 

 verbs. 



But here we meet with an instance of the complexity and 

 obscurity that have been brought into English grammar by 

 attachment to Latin forms. Our nouns in their actual con- 

 dition have but one case, the genitive ; or, if the nominative be 

 allowed to be a case, then two cases are the utmost that our 

 nouns can be said to have. Why should more be assigned to 

 them ? It may be doubted, indeed, whether what is called the 

 nominative can be properly termed a case, for it differs from 

 the Latin nominative, which is .formed from a stem, common to 

 all the cases through which the noun passes ; whereas in English 

 the nominative is the stem itself. However this may be in 

 English, nouns now possess no more than two cases. This fact 

 is in no way affected by the allegation that the Anglo-Saxon, 

 the mother of the English, has several cases. It is with the 

 daughter, not with the mother, that we are here concerned. 



'///// /////////////////f/m 



COPY-SLIP NO. 5. THE LETTER 1. 



COPY-SLIP NO. 6. COMBINATION OF THE LETTERS U, 1. 



COPY-SLIP NO. 7. COMBINATION OP THE LETTERS i, t. 



LESSONS IN PENMANSHIP. III. 



WE now place before our readers the letter 1, the last of the 

 four letters that are formed either by the simple bottom-turn 

 itself, or by some slight modification of it. Proceeding by 'a 

 regular system of gradation, the self -teacher has been led first 

 to make the bottom-turn within the horizontal lines that contain, 

 as we stated in our last lesson, what may be termed the body 

 of any letter that has a head, loop, or tail extending above or 

 below these lines ; and then, after making the simple bottom- 

 turn, he was shown how to turn this stroke into the letter i by 

 placing a dot above it, to form the letter u by the combination 

 of two bottom turns, and to make the letter t by beginning the 

 thick down-stroke a little above the upper horizontal line, and 

 crossing it just above the same line by a fine hair-stroke. He 

 Must now proceed to make the letter 1, beginning the down- 

 1 stroke at the line e e, which is placed at a distance above the 

 *line a a nearly equal to the distance between the lines a a, 6 6. 



The chief difficulty that the learner has to encounter in making 

 the letter 1 arises from the length of the down-stroke, which 

 obliges him to bring his pen downwards in the same straight 

 line for a distance nearly half as long again as the letter t. At 

 first his hand will shake, and, as it is manifestly much easier to 

 make a short stroke than a long one, his early attempts at 

 making the letter 1 will not be quite so straight and even, 

 perhaps, as his copies of the shorter letters arising out of the 

 bottom-turn. Hia success, however, greater or less, as it may be, 



in making this letter will afford an excellent test of his progress, 

 and show him whether or not he be holding his pen in the proper 

 way and sitting in the proper position. If he find no difficulty 

 in repeating the letter 1 several times, and can do it with ease, 

 making a straight and well-formed stroke with an equal pressure 

 of the pen from top to bottom until it begins to narrow, he 

 may be sure that his position is correct, and that he is holding 

 his pen properly ; but if, on the ether hand, he find, after a few 

 trials, that the down-strokes of his letters are uneven and crooked, 

 owing to the shaking of his hand, and he feel pain in the ball 

 of the thumb and the thick muscles on the opposite side of the 

 palm of the hand, he may be sure that his position and the way 

 in which he holds his pen is stiff, constrained, and unnatural, 

 and requires amendment. To effect this, he must once more 

 turn to the directions given for holding the pen, etc., in our first 

 lesson in Penmanship, and carefully regulating the position of 

 his hand and body by these instructions, he will soon discover 

 the points in which he is at fault, and gradually acquire greater 

 ease and freedom in writing. 



After accomplishing the letter 1, the learner may proceed to 

 combinations of the letters that he has already made singly, 

 and for this purpose we have furnished him with copy-slips, 

 showing combinations of the letters u, i and i, t. Let him 

 copy these and all the examples that we shall give him in future 

 lessons again and again, remembering that in no branch of 

 learning is constant practice more necessary, especially to tha 

 self-teacher, than in Penmanship. 



