English Grammar and Composition for Public Schools

English Grammar and Composition for Public Schools is by G. H. Armstrong, Principal of Borden St. School, Toronto. The preface says that the plan of the work is inductive and practical, and that every principle is presented through the observation of examples of good English.

Lesson V is headed Adjectives and says that a word used to modify a noun or pronoun is called an adjective. The exercises ask the pupil to write a sentence containing a pronoun used for the speaker, and to name the adjectives in given sentences and state the use of each. The text defines a cognate object as an objective with a similar or cognate meaning to that of the verb, and an objective predicate as a noun that completes the meaning of a transitive verb and describes its object. The text says that the effort may be trying and painful at first, but repetition gradually makes it easy, and even pleasant, and that we should enter on the path of effort betimes, too, before habits of self-indulgence have been acquired.