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Page: of 281
144 JUNE 15 & 16, 1872 GRASS VALLEY UNION
brought his bride to Paris, where a son and daughter were born. Then Elizabeth Jane learned her
husband had a French mistress, and tried to return to Grass Valley. Fricot refused to let her take the
children—if she left France she would never see them again, “the Emperor” warned.]
DELEGATES.—The delegates to the Democratic Convention, which meets to-day, are from
Nevada township, as follows: Geo. W. Smith, L. W. Dreyfus, George E. Turner, Wm. Weeks, Julius
Greenwald, William Bradley, John L. Caldwell, G. E. Withington, P. Hennerfauth.
At Truckee the following delegates were elected: H. W. Roberts, E. J. Brick, Frank Hanson,
Frank Rubol, S. Heyman, James Swain, J. R. Payne, J. R. Cross, J. B. Henry, W. R. Campbell.
SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 1872
EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
Reform in English Grammar.
Shall we ever have a reform in English Grammar? Must teachers forever continue to hammer
into their pupils’ heads that monstrous, irrational and puzzling pseudoscience miscalled English
Grammar? Hecatombs upon hecatombs of youthful intellects are daily offered up on the cruel altars
of “that hybrid monster called English Grammar, before whose fruitless loins we have sacrificed,
for nearly three hundred years, our children and the strangers within our gates.” And the worst of
all is, we teachers are compelled, however unwillingly, to officiate as high priests at these revolting
sacrifices.
Every grammar published starts out with the vaunting promise to teach our pupils to read,
write and speak his mother-tongue correctly. But what tyro in teaching does not know that after
a pupil has crammed its contents into his memory he is as far from possessing any one of these
desirable arts as when he began to learn the first ponderous falsehood contained in the book?
Who ever learned to read, write, or speak the English language correctly from the study of any of
the English grammars now in use in our schools? And how many do all three without having ever
muddied their intellects by an hour’s study of any one of them.
A candid consideration of these questions must suggest a doubt as to the utility of devoting
so much time to the study of our present English Grammars. If one-half the attention now given
to English Grammar in our schools were devoted to a rational study of the real principles of our
language, and to a practical application of these principles, we should soon see, among the pupils of
our schools, a very great and much to be desired improvement in the correct use of the language. But
the Latinists of three hundred years ago forced upon our language the grammar of a tongue in no
way grammatically allied to ours, and the consequence is that we have been, and are yet, wasting our
pupils’ time and throwing away our own energies in attempting to make them master an abstruse
and ponderous system of grammar which has no more to do with our language than with the
Chinese or Choctaw.
Our language possesses the simplest grammar of any ancient or modern language, whilst our
grammars are among the most extensive and abstruse. No author, so far as we know, has ever yet
attempted to write an English grammar for our language. We understand that Prof. Swinton is now
engaged on such a work, and if he succeeds in writing a real English grammar and in introducing
it into our schools, we have no doubt future generations of school-boys and school-girls will have
abundant reason to bless his name forever. Such a grammar will not be one-half the size of the
present books on the same subject. Our language has very little Syntax, a very simple Etymology,
and Orthography and Prosody have nothing to do with grammar. Nouns have no case, no person
and, except a few foreign nouns, no gender. Verbs have no mood, and but two tenses. They do not
agree with their subject in person or number. All Participles are adjectives and all Infinitives are
nouns. From these few hints it can be seen how much our grammar may be simplified.