opposite direction. Some of those who are satisfied with us and our work
are here put on record. How about the dissatisfied? A record of these
might be even more interesting, for it would point out weaknesses to be
strengthened and errors to be avoided--but that, as Kipling says, "is
another story."




THE PASSING OF THE POSSESSIVE: A STUDY OF BOOK-TITLES


If there is one particular advantage possessed by the Teutonic over the
Romance languages in idiomatic clearness and precision it is that
conferred by their ownership of a possessive case, almost the sole
remaining monument to the fact that our ancestors spoke an inflected
tongue. That we should still be able to speak of "the baker's wife's dog"
instead of "the dog of the wife of the baker" certainly should be regarded
by English-speaking people as a precious birthright. Yet, there are
increasing evidences of a tendency to discard this only remaining
case-ending and to replace its powerful backbone with the comparatively
limp and cartilaginous preposition. This tendency has not yet appeared so
much in our spoken as in our written language, and even here only in the
most formal parts of it. It is especially noticeable in the diction of the
purely formal title and heading.

That the reader may have something beyond an unsupported assertion that
this is the case, I purpose to offer in evidence the titles of some recent
works of fiction, and to make a brief statistical study of them.