Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/311

Rh with this requirement, we have the exorbitant claims of a complete anecdote, containing within itself an elaborately accented speech. To represent the anecdote as an insignificant appendage to pupils was a fault of sense; it is revealed to the few who would not have perceived it by the impossibility of reading the passage naturally.

The verb wonder presupposes the reader's familiarity with the circumstance wondered at; it will not do the double work of announcing both the wonder and the thing wondered at. 'I wondered at Smith's being there' implies that my hearer knew that Smith was there; if he did not, I should say 'I was surprised to find...'. Accordingly, in this very artificial sentence, the writer presupposes the inconceivable question: 'What were her feelings on finding that she had drifted...tribulation-bell?'. To read a sentence of minute and striking description with the declining accentuation that necessarily follows the verb wondered is of course impossible.