160 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
As indicated on pp. 117 and 118, the equivalence of “ him ” 
expressed and “him” understood affords an unfortunate oppor¬ 
tunity for misinterpretation, that equivalence being wrongly 
sensed as oneness. Loosely speaking, the object “him” and the 
subject ‘Ihim” are identical—are the same—are one; and, 
speaking with intentional vagueness, “him” is both subject of 
the infinitive, and also (though in another service) in the ac¬ 
cusative case; or, phrasing distinctly the misinterpretation 
lurking in my vaguer statement, the subject of the infinitive is 
in the accusative case. 
Strictly speaking, however, my final statement is untrue, or 
at least there is no means of establishing its truth; for the sub¬ 
ject of the infinitive in the given illustration was never dis¬ 
tinct enough in mind to even raise the question of case, to say 
nothing of using case inflection. But the statement has suf¬ 
ficient look of truth to satisfy the average user of speech, if 
not indeed to deceive the very elect. 
In 
(2) “I asked him to employ Italians.” 
the “him” which is in the relation of employer to employee 
with Italians—that is, the subject of the infinitive—is some¬ 
what more distinctly before the mind. 
In 
(3) “I desired him to employ Italians.” 
the “him” which belongs with “to employ Italians” is even 
more conspicuous, tending to eclipse the “him” which is ob¬ 
ject of “desired.” Indeed the desire cannot be regarded as af¬ 
fecting any one, except so far as told him. That is, so far as 
any “him” is object of “desired,” the expression may be con¬ 
strued as meaning “I told him my desiring him to employ 
Italians.” 
At this point I believe the average language-user’s discrimin¬ 
ation utterly fails, it being quite too much to ask of any mind, 
in the haste of adapting thought to linguistic limitations, to 
sense the “him” as mentally double, one “him” being object of 
“desired,” and the other “him” the subject of “employ.” What 
happens is rather this: with the strengthened recognition of 
the “him” as subject of the infinitive (and therefore properly 
