Exercise 21
Reduce the following sentences to their component members—simple, partially compound, or complex. State whether these members are declarative, interrogative, or imperative. State also the relation existing between members, and point out the connective.
1. Occupy a youth early and wisely, in agriculture or business, in science or in literature, and he will never think of war otherwise than as a calamity.—Ruskin.
2. One lackey carried the chocolate pot into the sacred presence; a second milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third presented the favored napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches) poured the chocolate out.—Dickens.
3. There was not a nook or a corner in the whole house fit to lodge any respectable ghost; for every part was as open to observation as a literary man’s character and condition, his figure and estate.—Holmes.
4. The word lengthy has been charged to our American account, but it must have been invented by the first reader of Gower’s works, the only inspiration of which they were ever capable.—Lowell.
5. Whenever and wherever we turned, a sudden “tinkle-tankle” would show that we had nearly fallen over a prostrate cow; therefore after half an hour of darkness, ditches, and cows, we returned to the hotel and its comforts.—Bolles.
6. Ye have quitted the ways of God or ye would not have been unhappy.—Carlyle.
7. Glossy hammock-cloths concealed the persons of those who were on the deck, while the close bulwarks gave the brigantine the air of a vessel equipped for war.—Cooper.
8. The trees have formed their buds in autumn every year since trees first waved; yet you will find that the great majority of persons have never made that discovery, but suppose that nature gets up those ornaments in spring.—Higginson.