Gram., p. 16.  “The first person is the speaker.”—­Parker & Fox’s Gram., Part i, p. 6.  “Person is that, which distinguishes a noun, that speaks, one spoken to, or one spoken about.”—­S.  B. Hall’s Gram., p. 6.  “A noun that speaks!” A noun “spoken to!” If ever one of Father Hall’s nouns shall speak for itself, or answer when “spoken to,” will it not reprove him?  And how can the first person be “the person WHO speaks,” when every word of this phrase is of the third person?  Most certainly, it is not HE, nor any one of his sort.  If any body can boast of being “the first person in grammar,” I pray, Who is it?  Is it not I, even I?  Many grammarians say so.  But nay:  such authors know not what the first person in grammar is.  The Rev. Charles Adams, with infinite absurdity, makes the three persons in grammar to be never any thing but three nouns, which hold a confabulation thus:  “Person is defined to be that which distinguishes a noun that speaks, one spoken to, or one spoken of.  The noun that speaks [,] is the first person; as, I, James, was present.  The noun that is spoken to, is the second person; as, James, were you present?  The noun that is spoken of is the third person; as, James was present.”—­Adams’s System of English Gram., p. 9.  What can be a greater blunder, than to call the first person of a verb, of a pronoun, or even of a noun, “the noun that speaks?” What can be more absurd than are the following assertions? “Nouns are in the first person when speaking.  Nouns are of the second person when addressed or spoken to.”—­O.  C. Felton’s Gram., p. 9.

OBS. 4.—­An other error, scarcely less gross than that which has just been noticed, is the very common one of identifying the three grammatical persons with certain words, called personal pronouns:  as, “I is the first person, thou the second, he, she or it, the third.”—­Smith’s Productive Gram., p. 53. “I is the first person, singular. Thou is the second person, singular. He, she, or it, is the third person, singular. We is the first person, plural. Ye or you is the second person, plural. They is the third person, plural.”—­L.  Murray’s Grammar, p. 51; Ingersoll’s, 54; D.  Adams’s, 37; A.  Flint’s, 18; Kirkham’s, 98; Cooper’s, 34; T.  H. Miller’s, 26; Hull’s, 21; Frost’s, 13; Wilcox’s, 18; Bacon’s, 19; Alger’s, 22; Maltby’s, 19; Perley’s, 15; S.  Putnam’s, 22.  Now there is no more propriety in affirming, that “I is the first person,” than in declaring that me, we, us, am, ourselves, we think, I write, or any other word or phrase of the first person, is the first person.  Yet Murray has given