Page:The Comic English Grammar.djvu/60

56 The Present Tense, as its name implies, represents an action or event occurring at the present time: as "I lament; rogues prosper; the mob rules."

The Imperfect Tense represents a past action or event, but which, like a mutton chop, may be either thoroughly done, or not thoroughly done; were it meet, we should say, under-done: as,

"When I was a little boy some fifteen years ago,

My mammy doted on me—Lork! she made me quite a show."

"When our reporter left, the Honorable Gentleman was still on his legs."

The legs of most "Honorable Gentlemen" must be tolerably stout ones; for the "majority" do not stand on trifles. However, we are not going to commit ourselves, like some folks, nor to get committed, like other folks; so we will leave "Honorable Gentlemen" to manage matters their own way.

The Perfect Tense declares a thing to have been done at some time, though an indefinite one, antecedent to the present time. That, however, which the Perfect Tense represents as done, is completely, or, as we say of a green one, when he is humbugged by the thimble-rig people, regularly done; as, "I have been out on the river." "I have caught a crab."

Catching a crab is a thing regularly (in another sense than completely) done, when civic swains pull young ladies up to Richmond. We beg to inform persons unacquainted with aquatic phraseology, that "pulling pup" young ladies, or others, is a very different thing from "pulling up" an omnibus conductor or a cabman. What an equivocal language is ours! How much less