The herald., 1897-09-05
VATT7E RV Jn11p Rorden Rand

optatives, subjunctives and infnitives
You tell one from the other more quick
~ by the context, as in the sentence,
IT sail for Europe next week." than you
can by the grammar. Especially is this
so in Homer, where the ''causative
aorst," as it is called, can sometimes be
told in no other way.
There is in fact no learning of any Ian
guage until you have control of this
context, and the more quickly you get
it the more quickly you learn grammar
without the book called the grammar
The whole thing is like learning stenog-
raphy. Until you can read by the con-
text all the hooks and vowel signs and
positions on, above or through the line
amount to nothing. There is no reading
that is of the slightest practical value
But when you have a sight familiarity
with so many thousand signs they un-
ravel at a glance nearly all the rest. 1t
is exactly the same with languages, the
modern as we'll as the ancient.
Johnny was much chagrined because
he couldn't go to ride"
The boy who sees chagrined here for
the first time knows at once from the
words on either side that chagrined
means mad, sorry, disappointed or
something very close to it. What earth
ly difference does 1t make at first which
it is? Later on he will find his first guess
confirmed or modified. Have you not
learned more than half the words of
your own language in the same way?
But no-the venerable professor would
have us stop instanter, when we meet
similar difficulty in a new language.
We must turn on the ancient light from
the musty, fuSty lamps of Hardness OF
Andrews and Stoddard and run down
the finest subtlety to its last hole or We
shall be irretrievably lost in a fog of
error. Doth not that grand old muzzle-
loader, Gould Brown, tell us that life
time Of experience in teaching has
proved to him that the only way to teach
grammar is to make the pupil commit
the rules perfectly to memory first and
then apply them? He has only copied
| this from the seventeenth century
matchlocks of the other hemisphere.
Under this kind of teaching the
reading" of boys in college is the put
ting together of dissected map with the
back turned toward them. The joints
! ana IQe uONeldllS are SN6TylQllS, The
relations of the different countries tc
each other nothing. An ogre with a boob
and pencil sits trying to trip their feet
with a thousand snares that only a fine
scholar can avoid in his own language
and that even plenty of scholars con.
slider entirely too fine to burden m memory
with but keep in some pigeon hole desl
like Browns Grammar of Grammars un.
til wanted-which is probably never. In.
stead Of bringing the pupils face to fac.
with living beauty, warm with flesh ant
blood and bright with sparkling eyes
they are kept fumbling over the dr.,
bones Of skeleton, arranging, ticket
ing and labelling and calling that read
ing. While some improvement has NJ
doubt been made in these old methods
there are still too many teachers VIII,
cling to accuracy first while of thos
who really learn languages so as to max
4 any use of them that is at all satisfac
tory for either pleasure or business
nearly all let accuracy take care of 1t
self. First, last and all the time thei
object is to understand. Accuracy vii
come with time II It is coming at all. l
you understand and can make yoursel
understood you can always force NOR
accuracy II necessary. But attempt I