EXERCISE

Divide the following sentences into their principal and subordinate clauses, and give the subject substantive and the predicate verb of each principal clause; the subject substantive and the predicate verb of each subordinate clause; and the modifiers of each subject substantive and predicate verb:

1. Stanislas was a cabinet maker who emulated the good Miller of the Dee in his happiness and good cheer. He had a wife, he had a home, and he had his children three. One day Stanislas suffered an accident to his foot, which had to be amputated. While he was recovering from the operation a fourth baby came to his home.

2. A home is the place where Bet belongs because she has never known a home. She is a strange little waif. She will hide in some dark corner of the docks where she can look out at the sea.

3. Helen, who is fifteen, works at a flower and feather factory. Every evening she brings home a bundle of wire and petals, which her mother turns into gayly-colored blossoms. Helen is the real wage earner of the family.

4. A part of my childhood was passed in a London orphanage. When Christmastime came around, a big table was spread, and on it were laid little presents for the inmates. One Christmas we were in line waiting for our presents. I had picked out a big, fat apple for mine. My eyes and my stomach got bigger as I approached that table. When I was very near the table the housekeeper pounced on me and pushed me out of line.

Getting the Main Thought. Read the following extract taken from Dallas Lore Sharp's A Watcher in the Woods.1 What is the main idea in the selection?

1. Some of my friends were talking of birds, not long ago, when one of them turned to me and said hopelessly:

""Tis no use. We can't save them even if we do stop wearing them upon our hats. Civilization is bound to sweep them away. We shall be in a birdless world pretty soon, in spite of laws and Audubon societies."

I made no reply, but, for an answer, led the way to the street and down the track to this pole which High-hole had appropriated. I pointed out his hole and asked them to watch. Then I knocked. Instantly a red head appeared at the opening. High-hole was mad enough to eat us; but he changed his mind and with a bored, testy flip dived into the woods. He had served my purpose, however, for his red head sticking out of a hole in a street-railway pole was as a rising sun in the east of my friends' ornithological world. New light broke over this question of birds and men. The cars drive High-hole away? Not so long as cars are run by overhead wires on wooden poles.

2. High-hole is a civilized bird. Perhaps "domesticated" would better describe him; though domesticated implies the purposeful effort of man to change character and habits, while the changes which have come over High-hole — and over most of the wild birds are the result of High-hole's own free choosing.

3. If we should let the birds have their way they would involuntarily fall into civilized, if not into domesticated, habits. They have no deepseated hostility toward us; they have not been the aggressors in the long, bitter war of extermination; they have ever sued for peace. Instead of feeling an instinctive enmity, the birds are drawn toward us by the strongest of interests. If nature anywhere shows us her friendship and her determination, against all odds, to make that friendship strong, she shows it through the birds. The way they forgive and forget, their endless efforts at reconciliation, and their sense of obligation ought to shame us. They sing over every acre that we reclaim, as if we had saved it for them only; and in return they probe the lawns most diligently for worms, they girdle the apple trees for grubs, and gallop over the whole wide sky for gnats and flies, squaring their account, if may be, for cherries, orchards, and chimneys.

4. The very crows, in spite of certain well-founded fears, look upon a new farm not upon the farmer, perhaps—as a godsend. In the cold and poverty of winter, not only the crows, but the jays, quails, buntings, and sparrows, help themselves, as by right, from our shocks and cribs. Summer and winter the birds find food so much more plentiful about the farm and village, find living in all respects so much easier and happier here than in remote, wild regions, that, as a whole, they have become a suburban people.

5. But life is more than meat for the birds. There is a subtle yet real attraction for them in human society. They like its stir and change, its attention and admiration. The shyest and most modest of the birds pines for appreciation. The cardinal grosbeak, retiring as he is, cannot believe that he was born to blush unseen to the tip of his beautiful crest. And the hermit thrush, meditative, spiritual, and free as the heart of the swamp from worldliness even he loves a listener, and would not waste his sweetness any longer on desert forest air. I do not know a single bird who does not prefer a wood with a wagon road through it. 6. My friends had smiled at such assertions before their introduction to the bird in the pole. They knew just enough of woodpeckers to ex

STUDYING THE PARAGRAPH

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pect High-hole to build in the woods, and, when driven from there, to disappear, to extinguish himself rather than stoop to existence within walls of hardly the dignity and privacy of a hitching post.

7. He is a proud bird and a wild bird, but a practical, sensible bird withal. Strong of limb and mighty of voice, he was intended for a vigorous, untamed life, and even yet there is the naked savage in his bound and his whoop. But electric cars have come, with smooth-barked poles, and these are better than rotten trees, despite the jangle and hum of wires and the racket of grinding wheels. Like the rest of us, he has not put off his savagery; he has simply put on civilization. Street cars are a convenience and a diversion. He has wings and wildest freedom any moment, and so, even though heavy timber skirts the track and shadows his pole, and though across the road opposite stands a house where there are children, dogs, and cats, nevertheless, High-hole follows his fancy, and instead of building back in the seclusion and safety of the woods, comes out to the street, the railroad, the children, and the cats, and digs him a modern house in this sounding cedar pole.

8. This approach of the flicker to domestic life and human fellowship is an almost universal movement among the birds. And no tendency anywhere in wild life is more striking. The four-footed animals are rapidly disappearing before the banging car and spreading town, yet the birds welcome these encroachments and thrive on them. One never gets used to the contrast in the bird life of uninhabited places with that about human dwellings. Thoreau tells his wonder and disappointment at the dearth of birds in the Maine woods; Burroughs reads about it and goes off to the mountains, but has himself such an aggravated shock of the same surprise that he also writes about it. The few hawks and rarer wood species found in these wild places are shy and elusive. More and more, in spite of all they know of us, the birds choose our proximity over the wilderness. Indeed, the longer we live together, the less they fear and suspect us.

Studying the Paragraph. What is the main idea in the foregoing selection? In developing this idea what does each paragraph contribute to the whole theme? Is one paragraph linked with another? by what means? In what part

of the paragraph is the most important thought expressed? Why? Is the opening of each paragraph important? What purpose does the opening sentence serve besides introducing the thought?

The Paragraph Topics. The quotation in the first part of this selection is, for convenience in reading, placed in a separate paragraph; but it is linked with the sentence preceding it and those following it, so that the first paragraph practically ends with the words wooden poles. Read to this point and try to sum up in one sentence the main thought of the paragraph. Do this for each of the eight paragraphs. See if there is any one sentence in the paragraph that may be taken as the key sentence. If not, form a sentence that will express the main thought of the paragraph. It will be better for each student to work on this for himself before reading the following summary.

Analysis by Paragraphs. An analysis of the selection. from Mr. Sharp shows that the following sentences underlie his paragraph structure:

1. The common idea that civilization will sweep the birds away is not correct.

2. High-hole has freely chosen to be a civilized bird.

3. The birds generally feel a real friendliness for men.

4. This is partly because they can get food more easily when they live near our homes.

5. 'Life is more than meat for the birds."

6. My friends had smiled at such assertions because they thought birds like High-hole were too proud to live anywhere except in trees.

7. "He is a proud bird and a wild bird, but a practical, sensible bird withal."

8. "This approach of the flicker to domestic life and human fellowship is an almost universal movement among the birds."