The up-curled mouth of pleasure
Can preach of sorrow's worth;
But give it a sip, and a wryer lip,
Was never made on earth.
PLAIN ENGLISH
LESSON 19
Dear Comrade:
In this lesson we are completing our study of the preposition. The preposition is one of the last parts of speech which we take up for study and it is also one of the last parts of speech to be added to our vocabulary. The child does not use the preposition when it first begins to talk. It uses the names of things; words of action; words that describe objects and actions. It does not begin to use prepositions until it begins to relate ideas.
The relation of ideas means that we are thinking; combining ideas into thoughts. Then we begin to need prepositions, which are words of relation, connecting words, expressing the relationship between ideas. The measure of the fullness and richness of our lives is the measure of our understanding of the world about us, of the relationship existing between the different phases of that world and of our relationship to it all.
So words do not mean much to us until we can relate them to our own lives and our own experiences. When you look up a word in the dictionary, do not study the word alone; study also the thing for which it stands. A person with a good memory might acquire a vocabulary by sheer feat of memory; but what good would it do unless each word could be related to practical experience? It is only in this way that words become alive to us. We must have an idea, a concept and knowledge of the thing for which the word stands.