into such errors as "How many sounds _have_ each of the vowels?" "Five
years' interest _are_ due." "She is older than _me_." He probably would not
say "each _have_," "interest _are_," "_me_ am." One thoroughly familiar
with the structure of the sentence will find little trouble in using
correctly the few inflectional forms in English.

+The Study of the Sentence for the Laws of Discourse+.--Through the study
of the sentence we not only arrive at an intelligent knowledge of the parts
of speech and a correct use of grammatical forms, but we discover the laws
of discourse in general. In the sentence the student should find the law of
unity, of continuity, of proportion, of order. All good writing consists of
good sentences properly joined. Since the sentence is the foundation or
unit of discourse, it is all-important that the pupil should know the
sentence. He should be able to put the principal and the subordinate parts
in their proper relation; he should know the exact function of every
element, its relation to other elements and its relation to the whole. He
should know the sentence as the skillful engineer knows his engine, that,
when there is a disorganization of parts, he may at once find the
difficulty and the remedy for it.

+The Study of the Sentence for the Sake of Translation+.--The laws of
thought being the same for all nations, the logical analysis of the
sentence is the same for all languages. When a student who has acquired a
knowledge of the English sentence comes to the translation of a foreign
language, he finds his work greatly simplified. If in a sentence of his own
language he sees only a mass of unorganized words, how much greater must be
his confusion when this mass of words is in a foreign tongue! A study of
the parts of speech is a far less important preparation for translation,
since the declensions and conjugations in English do not conform to those
of other languages. Teachers of the classics and of modern languages are