In the following sentences the incomplete verbs, including infinitives and participles, are in italics. Mark the words, phrases or clauses which are used as objects or complements, to complete the meaning of these verbs.

There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns.

You have it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions. If you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.

I am paid $150.00 a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper with which I am connected. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things. Any one of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.

The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread.

You know this and I know it. So what folly is this to be toasting an "Independent Press."

We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.—John Swinton.

MODIFIERS OF THE SIMPLE SENTENCE

434. Remember that a simple sentence is one that contains a single statement, question or command. It is a clause, for it contains a subject and a predicate; but it contains only the one subject and the one predicate. A sentence containing two principal clauses, or a principal clause and a subordinate clause, would contain two complete statements, questions or commands, therefore it would not be a simple sentence, but compound or complex.

Remember, however, that the simple sentences may contain two or more subjects with the same predicate, or two or more predicates with the same subject, or both a compound subject and a compound predicate.

435. The modifiers in a simple sentence are always words or phrases. The modifiers of the subject are either adjectives or adjective phrases. The modifiers of the predicate are either adverbs or adverb phrases. If an adjective or an adverb clause is used as a modifier, then the sentence is no longer a simple sentence, but becomes a complex sentence, for it now contains a dependent clause.

ORDER OF ELEMENTS

436. The usual order of the principal elements in the sentence is the subject, the predicate and the object or complement, thus:

Subject Predicate
Men work
Subject Predicate Object
Men build houses
Subject Predicate Complement
Books are helpful

This is called the natural or logical order. Logical means according to sense or reason.