into the basement, they found the cocaine |
|stored beneath a heap of rags. |

He was not accurate, unless he meant that they found the cocaine while
on the way to the basement. The cause of his inaccuracy lies in the fact
that the time expressed by the participle _going_ varies from that of
the main verb. What he should have said was,

Having gone into the basement, ...

or better,

|After going into the basement, they found the |
|cocaine stored beneath a heap of rags. |

=152. Dangling Participles.=--Another detail for careful attention in
the use of the participle is the necessity of having a definite noun or
pronoun in the sentence for the participle to modify. It is wrong to
write,

|Having arrived at the county jail, the door was |
|forced open, |

because the sentence seems to say that the door did the arriving. The
sentence should be written,

|Having arrived at the county jail, the mob forced |
|open the door. |

=153. Agreement of Verbs.=--One should watch one's verbs carefully, too,
to see that they agree in number with their subjects. One is sometimes
tempted to make the verb agree with the predicate, as in the following:

|The weakest section of the course are the ninth, |
|tenth, and eleventh holes. |

But English usage requires agreement of the verb with the subject. If
the subject is a collective noun, one may regard it as either singular
or plural. But when the writer has made his choice, he must maintain a
consistent point of view. One may say,

|The mob were now gathering in the northeast corner |
|of the yard and yelling themselves hoarse, |

or

|The mob was now gathering in the northeast corner of|
|the yard and yelling itself hoarse. |

But the two points of view may not be mixed in the same sentence or the
same paragraph. That the following sentence is wrong should be evident
at a glance:

|The Kellog-Haines Singing Party has been on the |
|lyceum and chautauqua platform for eight years and |
|have toured together the entire United States. |

Confusion is often caused also by qualifying phrases intervening between
subjects and their verbs. Thus:

|The number of the strikers and of the members of the |
|employme