&c.  The following example is manifestly inconsistent with itself; and, in my opinion, the three possessives are all wrong:  “The kitchen too now begins to give ‘dreadful note of preparation;’ not from armourers accomplishing the knights, but from the shop maid’s chopping force meat, the apprentice’s cleaning knives, and the journeyman’s receiving a practical lesson in the art of waiting at table.”—­West’s Letters to a Lady, p. 66.  It should be—­“not from armorers accomplishing the knights, but from the shopmaid chopping forcemeat, the apprentice cleaning knives, and the journeyman receiving,” &c.  The nouns are the principal words, and the participles are adjuncts.  They might be separated by commas, if semicolons were put where the commas now are.

OBS. 30.—­Our authors, good and bad, critics and no critics, with few exceptions, write sometimes the objective case before the participle, and sometimes the possessive, under precisely the same circumstances; as, “We should, presently, be sensible of the melody suffering.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 122.  “We should, presently, be sensible of the melody’s suffering.”—­Murray’s Gram., 8vo, p. 327.  “We shall presently be sensible of the melody suffering.”—­Murray’s Exercises, 8vo, p. 60.  “We shall presently be sensible of the melody’s suffering.”—­Murray’s Key, 8vo, p. 195.  “And I explain what is meant by the nominative case governing the verb, and by the verb agreeing with its nominative case.”—­Rand’s Gram., p. 31.  “Take the verb study, and speak of John’s studying his lesson, at different times.”—­Ib., p. 53.  “The following are examples of the nominative case being used instead of the objective.”—­J.  M. Putnam’s Gram., p. 112.  “The following are examples of an adverb’s qualifying a whole sentence.”—­Ib., p. 128.  “Where the noun is the name of a person, the cases may also be distinguished by the nominative’s answering to WHO, and the objective to WHOM.”—­Hart’s Gram., p. 46.  “This depends chiefly on their being more or less emphatic; and on the vowel sound being long or short.”—­Churchill’s Gram., p. 182.  “When they speak of a monosyllable having the grave or the acute accent.”—­Walker’s Key, p. 328.  Here some would erroneously prefer the possessive case before “having;” but, if any amendment can be effected it is only by inserting as there.  “The event of Maria’s loving her brother.”—­O.  B. Peirce’s Gram., p. 55.  “Between that and the man being on it.”—­Ib., p. 59.  “The fact of James placing himself.”—­Ib., p. 166.  “The event of the persons’ going.”—­Ib., p. 165.  Here persons’ is carelessly put for person’s, i.e., James’s:  the author was parsing the puerile text, “James went into a store and placed himself beside Horatio.”—­Ib., p. 164.  And I may observe, in passing, that Murray and Blair are both wrong in using commas with the adverb presently above.