they shall
cease; whether there be rules of grammar, they shall vanish away. Why,
look here. It's a rule of grammar, isn't it, that the subject of a
sentence must be put in the nominative case? Let it kick and bite, and
hang on to the desks all it wants to, in it goes and the door is slammed
on it. You think so? What is the word "you?" Second person, plural
number, objective case. Oh, no; the nominative form is "ye."

Don't you remember it says: "Woe unto you, ye lawyers"? Those who fight
against: "Him and me went down town," fight against the stars in
their courses, for the objective case in every language is bound and
determined to be The Whole Thing. Arithmetic alone is founded on a rock.
All else is fleeting, all else is futile, chaotic--a waste of time. What
is reading but a rival of morphine? There are probably as many men in
prison, sent there by Reading, as by Rum.

"Oh, not good Reading!" says the publisher.

"Not good Rum, either," says the publican.

Fight it out. It's an even thing between the two of you; Literature and
Liquor, Books and Booze, which can take a man's mind off his business
most effectually.

Still, merely as a matter of taste, I will defend the quality of
McGuffey's School Readers against all comers. I don't know who McGuffey
was; but certainly he formed the greatest intellects of our age,
present company not excepted. The true test of literature is its eternal
modernity. A thing of beauty is a joy forever. It always seems of the
age in which it is read. Now, almost the earliest lection in McGuffey's
First Reader goes directly to the heart of one of the greatest of modern
problems. It does not palter or beat about the bush. It asks right out,
plump and plain: "Ann, how old are you?"

Year by year, until we reached the dizzy height of the Sixth Reader,
were presented to us samples of the best English ever written. If you
can find, up in the garret, a worn and frayed old Reader, take it
down and turn its pages over. See if anything in these degenerate days
compares in vital strength and beauty with the story of the boy that
climbed the Natural Bridge, carving his steps in the soft limestone with
his pocket knife. You cannot read it without a thrill. The same inspired
hand wrote "The Blind Preacher," and who that ever can read it can
forget the climax reached in that sublime line: "Socrates died like a
philosopher, but Jesus Christ like a god!"

Not long ago I walked among the graves in