* * *

“I sleep.”

Is sleep a neuter verb?  So we are gravely told by our authors.  Can grammarians follow their own rules?  If so, they may spend the “live long night” and “its waking hours,” without resorting to “tired nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep;” for there is no process under heaven whereby they can procure sleep, unless they sleep it.  For one, I can never sleep without sleeping sleep—­sometimes only a short nap.  It matters not whether the object is expressed or not.  The action remains the same.  The true object is necessarily understood, and it would be superfluous to name it.  Cases, however, often occur where, both in speaking and writing, it becomes indispensable to mention the object.  “The stout hearted have slept their sleep.”  “They shall sleep the sleep of death.”  “They shall sleep the perpetual sleep, and shall not awake.” “Sleep on now and take your rest.”  The child was troublesome and the mother sung it to sleep, and it slept itself quiet.  A lady took opium and slept herself to death.  “Many persons sleep themselves into a kind of unnatural stupidity.”  Rip Van Winkle, according to the legend, slept away a large portion of a common life.

    “Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares.”

    “And sleep dull cares away.”

Was your sleep refreshing last night?  How did you procure it?  Let a person who still adheres to his neuter verbs, that sleep expresses no action, and has no object on which it terminates, put his theory in practice; he may as well sleep with his eyes open, sitting up, as to lie himself upon his bed.

A man lodged in an open chamber, and while he was sleeping (doing nothing) he caught a severe cold (active transitive verb) and had a long run of the fever.  Who does not see, not only the bad, but also the false philosophy of such attempted distinctions?  How can you make a child discover any difference in the act of sleeping, whether there is an object after it, or not?  Is it not the same?  And is not the object necessarily implied, whether expressed or not?  Can a person sleep, without procuring sleep?

* * *

“I stand.”

The man stands firm in his integrity.  Another stands in a very precarious condition, and being unable to retain his hold, falls down the precipice and is killed.  Who is killed?  The man, surely.  Why did he fall?  Because he could not stand.  But there is no action in standing, say the books.

“Stand by thyself, come not near me?” “Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not again entangled in the yoke of bondage.”  “Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.”  If it requires no act to stand, there can be no danger of falling.