33. At present the penny was doubly dear to him, having been long lost and lately found.—Barrie.
34. Sunday is coming to stand for perspiration, not inspiration.—Hillis.
35. The art of knowing when one is needed is more difficult than that of helping.—A. S. Hardy.
36. I cannot but think that the tennis and tramping and skating habits and the bicycle craze, which are so rapidly extending among our dear sisters and daughters in this country, are going also to lead to a sounder and heartier moral tone, which will send its tonic breath through all our American life.—Wm. James.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
Function.—No other sentence-element is more frequently employed or more useful for the precise expression of thought than the prepositional phrase. By its aid we can define exactly the scope of a noun, a verb, or an adjective. This is due not to the great number of prepositions in the English language, for there are not a hundred in all, but to the many different relations that may be denoted by one preposition. A striking illustration of this is found in the following sentence:
“One of the useful and grateful tasks of historians and biographers is to bring forward to the eye of every new generation of men and women those illustrious characters who made a great figure in the days of their grandfathers and grandmothers, yet who have nearly faded out of sight in the rush of new events and interests, and the rise of new stars in the intellectual firmament.”—Lord.
Here we find the preposition of used eight times and expressing almost as many different relations. The first of-phrase, of the useful and grateful tasks of historians and biographers, serves to point out the whole group or class of things from which the one thing talked about is selected. The second phrase, of historians and biographers, limits tasks by telling who performed these tasks. The third phrase of every new generation of men and women, limits eyes by telling whose eyes are meant. The fourth phrase, of men and women, limits the application of the noun generation to human beings only, and brings in the nouns men and women to serve as antecedents of the pronoun their later in the sentence. The fifth phrase, of their grandfathers and grandmothers, specifies what days by locating them in the past. The sixth phrase out of sight, has the preposition of reinforced by out so that the two words are equivalent to from, and thus the phrase denotes not only place but movement away from it. The seventh phrase, of new events and interests, and the eighth, of new stars, are alike in function; they tell what things rush and rise.
Every one of these phrases except out of sight modifies a noun; but just as often a phrase introduced by of modifies a verb or an adjective. As soon as we hear the adjectives capable, full, glad, jealous, proud, rid, sure, weary, do we not expect an answer to the question, capable of what? full of what? glad of what? etc. And do we not usually find such verbs as borrow, buy, complain, cure, make, smell, speak, taste, tell, think, warn, followed by an of-phrase?