OLD-TIME SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL-BOOKS - online book

An Illustrated history & description Of Schools in the 18th & 19th Centurys.

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Grammars, Histories, and Minor Text-books 365
was there he wrote his grammar, published in 1795, and his several other school-books brought out within the next few years. Mr. Murray is described as modest in manner, humane and generous, and, in spite of bad health, unfailingly cheerful. His books were all works of solid merit, though not very pala­table to children. The grammar looks dreary to the last degree now, and it must have had something of the same aspect even in the heyday of its popularity. There is a tradition that a friend of the author's once said to him,"Of all contrivances invented for puzzling the brains of the young your grammar is the worst," and this anecdote is quite believable. Murray, how­ever, introduced system into the treatment of the subject, and is known not unjustly as " the father of English Grammar."
PRONOUNS.
A man has stolen a bundle, and he is running away with it.
Here he and it are pronouns, because they stand for nouns, and save the trouble of repeating them. If it were not for the pronouns, we should have to say, a man has stolen a bundle, and the man is run­ning away with the bundle; but the pronouns save the necessity of repeating the words man and bundle. From Murray's Grammar, adapted to the present mode of Instruction by Enoch Pond;
1835.
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