Page:The Comic English Grammar.djvu/98

94 with this rule; for many of them, while undergoing personal chastisement, exclaim, for the purpose, as it would appear, of causing its duration to be shortened—"Oh pray, Sir, oh pray, Sir, oh pray, Sir! I won't do so no more!"

Prepositions govern the objective case: as, "What did the butcher say of her?" "He said that she would never do for him; that she was too thin for a wife, and he was not fond of a spare rib."

The delicate ear is much offended by any deviation from this rule: as, in a shocking and vulgar song which it was once our misfortune to hear:—

We had occasion, in the Etymology, to remark on a certain misuse of the preposition, of. This, perhaps, is best explained by stating that of, in the instances cited, is made to usurp the government of cases which are already under a rightful jurisdiction: as, "What are you got a eating of?" "He had been a beating of his wife."

Conjunctions connect similar moods and tenses of verbs, and cases of nouns and pronouns: as, "A coat of arms suspended on a wall is like an executed traitor; it is hanged, drawn, and quartered." "If you continue thus to drink brandy and water and to smoke cigars, you will be like Boreas the North wind, who takes 'cold without' wherever he goes, and always '. [sic]blows a cloud' when it comes in his way." "Do you think there is