6. Yet of an evening, or on Sunday, she was no village gossip.
Oral Exercise.—The following passage, from Hawthorne, is written in excellent loose sentences. Change to periodic all of them that can be so changed without hurting the ease of structure. Whatever else it be, a periodic sentence should never be strained or unnatural.
Then Theseus bent himself in good earnest to the task, and strained every sinew with manly strength and resolution. He put his whole brave heart into the effort. He wrestled with the big and sluggish stone as if it had been a living enemy. He heaved, he lifted, he resolved now to succeed, or else to perish there, and let the rock be his monument forever! Æthra stood gazing at him, and clasped her hands, partly with a mother’s pride, and partly with a mother’s sorrow. The great rock stirred! Yes, it was raised slowly from the bedded moss and earth, uprooting the shrubs and flowers along with it, and was turned upon its side. Theseus had conquered!
Inappropriate Periodicity.—It is foolish to use an elaborate suspended structure when a very simple thought or a very rapid narrative is to be given. Note the pomposity of the following sentences. Remove it by changing the structure.
“Three summers ago, to rejoin my family in northern Michigan, I left the city. On a little peninsula which juts out into Lake Michigan, a group of houses, dignified by the name of Edgewood, stands. Undistracted by the bustle of hotel life, a few sensible people live here. To get away from town for a few days and lounge in the pine woods about Edgewood, to me is always very pleasant.”
Oral Exercise.—Examine the following sentences one by one, and say whether each is (a) wholly periodic, (b) wholly loose, or (c) partly loose and partly periodic. When the last is the case, show at what point the change of structure occurs.
1. He who walks in the way these following ballads point will be manful in necessary fight, fair in trade, loyal in love, generous to the poor, tender in the household, prudent in living, plain in speech, merry upon occasion, simple in behavior, and honest in all things.—Lanier.
2. While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, who had accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It was long since he had seen her; but he had not failed to contribute largely, out of his small means, to her comfort. In order to defray the charges of her funeral, and to pay some debts which she had left, he wrote a little book in a single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without reading them over. A hundred pounds were paid him for the copyright; and the purchasers had great cause to be pleased with their bargain, for the book was “Rasselas.”—Macaulay: Life of Johnson.