“No,” said Preposition, “I do not alter for him, nor he for me. But he does not agree with Adverb either. Poor Adverb agrees with nobody, and nobody agrees with him; and he, poor fellow! cannot govern anybody, either. Now I govern every noun or pronoun that I come before, for I put them in the Objective Case.”
“I object,” cried the Judge. “I will not have that word brought into court. I said so before, and I say so again. Nominative Case is bad enough, but Objective Case is enough to turn a brown wig grey in a single night. Break up the court! Critics, clear the room!”
And Judge Grammar rose hastily from his seat, and stalked angrily out, while all the Parts-of-Speech stood looking speechlessly at each other till the policemen came, bundled them all out, and locked the doors behind them.
In spite of the hurry, however, Serjeant Parsing managed to hand up to the people of Schoolroom-shire the following verses, begging the ladies and gentlemen there to find out all the prepositions in them, and to count how many lines there are in which Preposition has nothing to say.
Beside a bluebell on the heath,
Among the purple heather,
A fairy lived, and crept beneath
The leaves in windy weather.
She drank the dewdrops from the stalk,