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Now, whenever I chance to see some work of classical antiquity, instead of being moved to eager enthusiasm, I begin recalling, ut consecutivum, the irregular verbs, the sallow grey face of my uncle, the ablative absolute. . . . I turn pale, my hair stands up on my head, and, like the cat, I take to ignominious flight.
It gave great satisfaction; especially every time there was a good long substantive in the third declension, ablative case, with an adjective to match; at which periods the assembly became very tender, and were much affected. And now the stone was lowered down into its place, amidst the shouting of the concourse.
'Claret will do for the Vocative, said the captain, gravely; 'the more so as there is plenty of it at your table, Greg. Ablative hoc, hac, hoc, which sounds as if the gentleman had become incapable of speech beyond the name of his wine. So we will abandon the declension of the article for a dash of champagne, which there's no declining, I hope. Wonderful men, those Romans!
"Well, Foster," Claremont used to say, as he returned a prose entirely besmirched with blue pencil, "I believe you really try, but the result is most disheartening." Foster always looked profoundly distressed; and at the end of the hour he would go up, prose in hand, and ask why the subject of an active verb could not be in the ablative.
I gained the important information that "sto, fido, confido, assuesco, and preditus" govern the ablative, and other valuable lore; but when I asked the teacher where the Latin vernacular came in, she replied that that would come to me later that I must "open my mouth and shut my eyes while she gave me something to make me wise."
Thus, in the instance of rumah, a house; deri pada rumah signifies from a house; but it would be talking without use or meaning to say that deri pada is the sign of the ablative case of that noun, for then every preposition should equally require an appropriate case, and as well as of, to, and from, we should have a case for deatas rumah, on top of the house.
I heard at another time a grave divine, of fourscore years of age at least, so sour and hard-favoured, that one would be apt to mistrust that it was Scotus Redivivus; he taking upon him to treat of the mysterious name, JESUS, did very subtly pretend that in the very letters was contained, whatever could be said of it: for first, its being declined only with three cases, did expressly point out the trinity of persons, then that the nominative ended in S, the accusative in M, and the ablative in U, did imply some unspeakable mystery, viz., that in words of those initial letters Christ was the summus, or beginning, the medius, or middle, and the ultimus, or end of all things.
Since then everything has been all right, and now we discuss the education of the children and the emancipation of women from superstition and old-maidishness, from sentimentality and the devil and his ablative, but we talk when we are alone together and that is the best way of avoiding misunderstandings. Don't you think so, old lady?" "Yes, Willy, dear, and now I shall come and pay you a call."
DIS: the spellings diis, dii which many recent editors still keep, are probably incorrect, at all events it is certain that the nominative and ablative plural of deus formed monosyllables, except occasionally in poetry, where dei, deis were used. Even these dissyllabic forms scarcely occur before Ovid. ET: emphatic at the beginning of a sentence: 'aye, and'. MELIUS: sc. dixit.
I do hope these chameleon artists will leave us the multiplication table, the yardstick, and the ablative absolute. I'm not so particular about the wine-gallon, for prohibition will probably do away with that anyhow. When I was in school I could tell to a foot the equatorial and the polar diameter of the earth, and what makes the difference.
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