The following is a curious specimen of loose writing. In the first place, we cannot say that "To lean back in a reclining-chair and whirl away" is "a panorama of delight, a road full of surprises." Next, the concluding portion, "surprises, where," etc., is not so much a description of the surprises as an enumeration of them. Rigorous method would require period and capital: "These are," etc. Animated style, however, requires a different construction :

To lean back in a reclining-chair and whirl away in a breezy July day, past lakes, groves of oak, past fields of barley being reaped, past hay-fields, where the heavy grass is toppling before the swift sickle, is a panorama of delight, a road full of delicious surprises, where down a sudden vista lakes open, or a distant wooded hill looms darkly blue, or swift streams, foaming deep down the solid rock, send whiffs of cool breezes in at the window.

Leaning back in a recliningchair, whirling away in a breezy July day past lakes, past groves of oak, past fields of barley being reaped, past hay-fields where the heavy grass is toppling before the swift sickle, one has a panorama of delight, a journey full of pleasant surprises through a sudden vista lakes open, or a distant wooded hill looms darkly blue, or swift streams foaming deep down [at the foot of?] the solid rock send whiffs of cool breezes in at the window.

Unity in the Conditioned Statement.

14. General Remarks.-In the sentence of conditioned statement the problem is more complicated. Not only must each member be a unit, but the two members taken together must form a unit. The sentence as a whole must express the precise relation existing between the members. Whatever this relation may be, it should be obvious at a glance.

Further, since each member is a quasi-sentence, each member should have its own subject and its own verb, or verbal form.

If in one member no subject is expressed, the reader must infer that both members have the same subject. Neglect of this principle has led to many blunders; the most common of these is the unrelated, or dangling, participle.

For example, the following is perfectly correct:

Trudging along the street, he scrupled not to keep company with Phoebe, etc.-HAWTHORNE.

The subject of the first member is plainly the "he" of the second. In the following, however,

Leaving him [Quilp] to visions in which, perhaps, the quiet figures in the old church porch were not without their share, be it our task to rejoin them as they sat and watched.-DICKENS.

what is the subject of "leaving"? The subject of the second member is "task," or "to rejoin"; neither of them will answer. The only subject which will answer is the "we" to be deduced from the possessive adjective "our." Yet to write "We leaving him to visions . . . be it our task," is not English idiom. Dickens would have constructed a much better sentence had he written:

Leaving him to visions.

we will now rejoin, etc.

Sometimes the subject of one member may not be the precise word or phrase needed to bring out the thought of the sentence as a whole. For example:

* Although we are apt to think of Macaulay merely as a writer, he was the ablest parliamentary debater of his time.

Thus worded, the sentence expresses a contrast between what we think of Macaulay and what Macaulay really was. Whereas the writer intended to express a distinction between that aspect of Macaulay which is most familiar and another aspect which is less familiar but not less important. The sentence may be recast:

Macaulay, although he is best known to us as a writer only, was the ablest parliamentary debater of his time.

Frequently the writer does not even perceive that one of his statements is conditioned upon the other; he strings them together as if co-ordinate:

*The train left us at — and

we took a stage for the rest of the journey.

Leaving the train at

we

took a stage for the rest of the journey.

15. Dangling Participle.-This fault is to be detected occasionally in good writers; in untrained writers it is very

Even after the "dangling participle" has been corrected, the last sentence as a whole is awkward.

It is hard to say upon what model Terence has formed his plays. There is no chorus, yet there is a pause in the representation at the end of every act.

The frequent omission of connectives makes the description blunt and crisp. [The thought is really unconditioned.]

During the repair of our Aurora Street entrance customers will please use the entrance on State Street.

Having no power of locomotion, I could not leave the ship, I could not even resolve to leave it, without first securing the assistance of others.

While I was lost in reverie, the hours slipped by.

While he is asleep, the Lilliputians discover him and bind him with numberless fine threads.1

16. Failure to Perceive Condition.-Sometimes the writer fails to realize that he is making a conditioned statement; consequently he makes everything incoherent.

In the following quotation there are no less than four verbs having four distinct subjects; the reader's mind is hurried from one subject to another. To obtain the desired unity we need only reduce the number of subjects to one:

After the ship came to anchor, they put me ashore, where I was welcomed by my friends, who received me with the greatest kind

ness.

Leaving the ship as soon as it had come to anchor, I was put ashore and received by my friends with the greatest kindness.

1 Taken from A. S. Hill, Foundations of Rhetoric, p. 219. In strictness, "while asleep" is not a dangling participle; but it illustrates the dangling construction.

In the following the writer probably intended to draw a contrast between what was actually done and what might have been done had the streets been in proper condition :

The writer of the following was unaware of the difference between the subordinate process of citing an illustrative example and the co-ordinate or independent process of summing up the entire class :