+Observation Lesson+.—Phrases in their natural order follow the words they modify. When two or more phrases belong to the same word, the one most closely modifying it stands nearest to it.
In the first sentence above, to me tells to whom the place is endeared; by many associations tells how it is endeared to me, and is therefore placed after to me. Try the effect of placing to me last. Phrases, like adjectives, may be of different rank.
Phrases are often transposed, or placed out of their natural order. Notice that to me, in (h) above, is transposed, and thus made emphatic, and that it is set off by the comma.
In (i), the phrase is loosely thrown in as if it were not essential, thus making a break in the sentence. To make this apparent to the eye we set the phrase off by the comma.
Place the phrase of (i) in three other positions, and set it off. When the phrase is at the beginning or at the end of the sentence, how many commas do you need to set it off? How many, when it is in the middle?
Do you find any choice in the four positions of this phrase? After having been told that your answers were correct, would it be a disappointment to be told that they were not all correct? Is the interest in a story best kept up by first telling the important points and then the unimportant particulars? What then do you think of placing this phrase at the end?
What does the last phrase of (j) modify? Take out the comma, and then see whether there can be any doubt as to what the phrase modifies.
In the placing of adverbs and phrases great freedom is often allowable, and the determining of their best possible position affords an almost unlimited opportunity for the exercise of taste and judgment.
Such questions as those on (i) above may suggest a mode of easy approach to what is usually relegated to the province of rhetoric. Let the pupils see that phrases may be transposed for various reasons—for emphasis, as in (h) above; for the purpose of exciting the reader's curiosity and holding his attention till the complete statement is made, as in (i) above, or in, "In the dead of night, with a chosen band, under the cover of a truce, he approached"; for the sake of balancing the sentence by letting some of the modifying terms precede, and some follow, the principal parts, as, "In 1837, on the death of William IV., Victoria succeeded to the throne"; and for other reasons.
Other selections maybe made and these exercises continued, the pupils discussing fully the effects of all possible changes.