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"A work on english grammar and composition"


TO THE TEACHER.--See suggestions, pages 159, 160.
Exercises on the Composition of the Sentence and the Paragraph.
FROM BEECHER'S "LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN."
1. Indolence inclines a man to rely upon others and not upon himself, to
eat their bread and not his own. 2. His carelessness is somebody's loss;
his neglect is somebody's downfall. 3. If he borrows, the article remains
borrowed; if he begs and gets, it is as the letting out of waters--no one
knows where it will stop. 4. He spoils your work, disappoints your
expectations, exhausts your patience, eats up your substance, abuses your
confidence, and hangs a dead weight upon all your plans; and the very best
thing an honest man can do with a lazy man is to get rid of him.
1. Indolence promises without redeeming the pledge; a mist of forgetfulness
rises up and obscures the memory of vows and oaths. 2. The negligence of
laziness breeds more falsehoods than the cunning of the sharper. 3. As
poverty waits upon the steps of indolence, so upon such poverty brood
equivocations, subterfuges, lying denials. 4. Falsehood becomes the
instrument of every plan. 5. Negligence of truth, next occasional
falsehood, then wanton mendacity--these three strides traverse the whole
road of lies.


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