English Grammar and Composition for Public Schools — Context and Discussion

From Sentence to Part of Speech

The first lesson defines a sentence as 'a group of words that expresses a complete thought,' then immediately distinguishes four types: declarative, imperative, interrogative, and exclamatory. The examples are concrete—'Honor thy father and thy mother,' 'Who gathered these beautiful flowers?'—and drawn from everyday language. This progression from the whole sentence to its parts (classes of words) mirrors the inductive method Armstrong champions. By Lesson LX, the student has moved through inflections, syntax, and analysis, arriving at the order of words, where the logical sequence—subject, verb, object, modifiers—can be inverted for emphasis, as in 'Flashed all their sabres bare.' The structure is cumulative, each lesson building on the last without assuming prior knowledge.

The Adverb's Reach

Lesson LX treats adverbs with unusual breadth. An adverb, Armstrong writes, 'is used to qualify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb,' but it may also carry 'the value of a predicate adjective' ('The sun is up') or even qualify a preposition ('He went far beyond his instructions'). The exercise sentences draw from Tennyson, Longfellow, and Procter, embedding grammatical analysis in literary contexts. For instance, 'Down came the storm, and smote amain / The vessel in its strength' requires the student to parse 'down' and 'amain' as adverbs modifying verbs, while 'clear over the fence' shows an adverb modifying a preposition. This attention to the adverb's flexibility—its ability to shift between modifying verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, prepositions, and even acting as a predicate—reveals a nuanced view of language that goes beyond simple classification.

Emphasis Through Inversion

Lesson LXI, 'The Order of Words,' catalogs eight circumstances where the subject follows the verb, from interrogatives ('Are you there?') to subjunctive clauses without 'if' ('Had I your advantages I should improve them'). The driving principle is that 'a member of a sentence may be given prominence by taking it out of its logical position and placing it first.' Armstrong illustrates with examples from Browning and Longfellow, showing how inversion creates emphasis: 'Flashed all their sabres bare' places the verb first for dramatic effect. The lesson also notes that attributes may follow the noun when they consist of a phrase or clause, or in poetry—'the star-led wizards haste with odors sweet.' This systematic treatment of word order as a tool for clarity, elegance, and emphasis reflects the book's practical bent.

Composition Without Crutches

Part V, on composition, is deliberately brief—only eleven lessons—but its preface is pointed: the usual exercises in completing half-built sentences and expanding phrases into clauses 'have done quite enough towards fostering stupidity.' Instead, Armstrong insists that 'the art of expression is acquired through steady practice,' so pupils should write compositions 'during part of every period, about things which they understand.' He emphasizes self-correction: students should be 'trained to correct their own exercises.' The prose selections included for analysis are left unannotated, so that 'teachers and pupils have not been deprived of the pleasure and profit of an independent examination.' This approach treats composition not as a mechanical fill-in-the-blank task but as a disciplined, iterative craft.

Armstrong's book is best approached as a working manual: read the examples aloud, attempt the exercises, and note how each lesson circles back to the sentence as the fundamental unit. The inductive method rewards patience—principles emerge from observation, not memorization. For modern readers, the 1901 examples offer a window into Canadian classroom language of the era, while the pedagogical stance—skeptical of rote, insistent on practice—remains surprisingly current.

That grey afternoon, Armstrong’s patient exercises—simply noticing how a sentence held together—felt less like schoolwork and more like listening to rain find its own rhythm. His quiet faith in observation lingered with me afterward, nudging me toward a similar little volume on reading. The one felt like an echo of the other, both trusting the slow, ordinary act of attention. How to Teach Reading in the Public Schools — Background and Themes sat on my shelf for years, and I finally understood why I’d kept it.