In the forms yourself and yourselves we have the possessive your marked as singular as well as plural.

[Sidenote:  Use of the reflexives.]

96.  There are three uses of reflexive pronouns:—­

(1) As object of a verb or preposition, and referring to the same person or thing as the subject; as in these sentences from Emerson:—­

     He who offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up
     like an Olympian.

I should hate myself if then I made my other friends my asylum.

We fill ourselves with ancient learning.

What do we know of nature or of ourselves?

(2) To emphasize a noun or pronoun; for example,—­

The great globe itself ... shall dissolve.—­SHAKESPEARE.

           Threats to all;
     To you yourself, to us, to every one.—­Id.

Who would not sing for Lycidas! he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.—­MILTON.

NOTE.—­In such sentences the pronoun is sometimes omitted, and the reflexive modifies the pronoun understood; for example,—­

Only itself can inspire whom it will.—­EMERSON.

     My hands are full of blossoms plucked before, Held dead within
     them till myself shall die.—­E.B.  BROWNING.

     As if it were thyself that’s here, I shrink with
     pain.—­WORDSWORTH.

(3) As the precise equivalent of a personal pronoun; as,—­

     Lord Altamont designed to take his son and myself.—­DE QUINCEY.

     Victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved.—­B. 
     FRANKLIN.

     For what else have our forefathers and ourselves been
     taxed?—­LANDOR.

     Years ago, Arcturus and myself met a gentleman from China who
     knew the language.—­THACKERAY.

Exercises on Personal Pronouns.

(a) Bring up sentences containing ten personal pronouns, some each of masculine, feminine, and neuter.

(b) Bring up sentences containing five personal pronouns in the possessive, some of them being double possessives.

(c) Tell which use each it has in the following sentences:—­

1.  Come and trip it as we go,
     On the light fantastic toe.

2.  Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it.

3.  It is an ill wind that blows nobody good.

4.  Courage, father, fight it out.

5.  And it grew wondrous cold.

6.  To know what is best to do, and how to do it, is wisdom.

7.  If any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is because the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.

8.  But if a man do not speak from within the veil, where the word is one with that it tells of, let him lowly confess it.