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But learning from the servant that Signor Fane was below, she changed her mind, and chose unhesitatingly from her stock of useful infinitives the appropriate two: "Dire venire." Gerald found her by the fire, her fur-cloak over her shoulders, her woolly afghan in her hands, and the picture on the chair before her. "Well?" he asked expectantly, looking at it, too, after they had shaken hands.
One result is that we have laws on the statute-book which don't even make grammar. Only last session the Minister of Education got a bill sent up to the Spiritual Chamber with three split infinitives in it." "What is a split infinitive?" inquired his Majesty. "Merely a grammatical error for which in your day school-boys used to be whipped. You were not.
There used to be a time, before he came along, when I walked in darkness, often beginning sentences with conjunctions and ending them with adverbs; I have even split infinitives and gone on my way rejoicing.
Dick wanted to know. "Oh, well, I have invented some and submitted it for St. George's if not approval tolerance. 'Carnation' for instance, and 'split my infinitives, are the most useful, and entirely inoffensive, when one's excited. Also I may have a cigarette with him after dinner, if I like, when we're alone. Only I haven't wanted it yet, for we have so much to say, it won't stay lighted.
This is your father! William our boy! How are you. I say, Arabella, then that was one of MY stockings? When I saw you on the stairs you seemed to dimly remind me Jones. To remind you dimly, mother. Smith. No, my boy. In future, nothing but split infinitives will appear in our paper. Please remember that. I will endeavour to always remember it, dad.
So this threat about the heavy task of Beginning breeds discouragement, anger, vexation, irritability, bad style, pomposity and infinitives split from helm to saddle, and metaphors as mixed as the Carlton. But it is just true enough to remain fast in the mind, caught, as it were, by one finger. Omne Trinum: they are difficult also in the shock of maturity and in their ending.
But not all infinitives are formed according to the type of shmor and gnob or of other types of internal vowel change. Certain verbs suffix a t-element for the infinitive, e.g., ten-eth "to give," heyo-th "to be." In Nass, an Indian language of British Columbia, plurals are formed by four distinct methods.
The real romance is that a perfectly ordinary young man, the sort of young man who cleans your car at the garage, a prosaically real young man wearing overalls faded to a thin blue, splitting his infinitives, and frequently having for idol a bouncing ingénue, should, in a rickety structure of wood and percale, be able to soar miles in the air and fulfil the dream of all the creeping ages.
The penalty for missing a train was ten days' hard labor splitting infinitives in the government tract-factory. Rather than impose this harsh punishment on any one, good-hearted engineers would permit their trains to loiter about the stations until they felt certain no other passengers would turn up.
The boy spoke in a mellow Irish voice, sweet and pure. It was scarcely definite enough to be called brogue, yet there was a trick in the turning of the sentence, the wrong sound of a letter here and there, that was almost irresistible to McLean, and presaged a misuse of infinitives and possessives with which he was very familiar and which touched him nearly.
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