beginning to appreciate these facts.

+The Study of the Sentence for Discipline+.--As a means of discipline
nothing can compare with a training in the logical analysis of the
sentence. To study thought through its outward form, the sentence, and to
discover the fitness of the different parts of the expression to the parts
of the thought, is to learn to think. It has been noticed that pupils
thoroughly trained in the analysis and the construction of sentences come
to their other studies with a decided advantage in mental power. These
results can be obtained only by systematic and persistent work. Experienced
teachers understand that a few weak lessons on the sentence at the
beginning of a course and a few at the end can afford little discipline and
little knowledge that will endure, nor can a knowledge of the sentence be
gained by memorizing complicated rules and labored forms of analysis. To
compel a pupil to wade through a page or two of such bewildering terms as
"complex adverbial element of the second class" and "compound prepositional
adjective phrase," in order to comprehend a few simple functions, is
grossly unjust; it is a substitution of form for content, of words for
ideas.

+Subdivisions and Modifications after the Sentence+.--Teachers familiar
with text books that group all grammatical instruction around the eight
parts of speech, making eight independent units, will not, in the following
lessons, find everything in its accustomed place. But, when it is
remembered that the thread of connection unifying this work is the
sentence, it will be seen that the lessons fall into their natural order of
sequence. When, through the development of the sentence, all the offices of
the different parts of speech are mastered, the most natural thing is to
continue the work of classification and subdivide the parts of speech. The
inflection of words, being distinct from their classification, makes a