popular American grammar-book.[1] So long ago as 1867, Gould protested against this elision as barbarous and idiotic, and drew up the following reductio ad dbsurdum:
At last annual meeting of Black Book Society, honorable John Smith
took the chair, assisted by reverend John Brown and venerable John White. The office of secretary would have been filled by late John Green, but for his decease, which rendered him ineligible. His place was supplied by inevitable John Black. In the course of the evening eulogiums were pronounced on distinguished John Gray and notorious Joseph Brown. Marked compliment was also paid to able historian Joseph White, discriminating philosopher Joseph Green, and learned professor Joseph Black. But conspicuous speech of the evening was witty Joseph Gray's apostrophe to eminent astronomer Jacob Brown,
subtle logician Jacob White, etc., etc.[2]
Richard Grant White, a year or two later, joined the attack in the New York Galaxy, and William Cullen Bryant included the omission of the article in his Index Expurgatorius, but these anathemas were as ineffective as Gould's irony. The more care- ful American journals, of course, incline to the the, and I note that it is specifically ordained on the Style-sheet of the Century Magazine, but the overwhelming majority of American news- papers get along without it, and I have often noticed its omis- sion on the sign-boards at church entrances.[3] In England it is never omitted.
- ↑ For the Record see the issue of Dec. 14, 1917, p. 309. For the New International Encyclopaedia see the article on Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip. For the World Almanac see the article on Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, ed. of 1914. The grammar-hook is Longman's Briefer Grammar; New York, 1908, p. 160. The editor is George J. Smith, a member of the board of examiners of the New York City Department of Education.
- ↑ Edwin S. Gould: Good English; New York, 1867, pp. 56-57.
- ↑ Despite the example of Congress, however, the Department of State inserts the the. Vide the Congressional Record, May 4, 1918, p. 6552. But the War Department, the Treasury and the Post Office omit it. Vide the Congressional Record, May 11, 1918, p. 6895 and p. 6914 and May 14, p. 7004, respectively. So, it appears, does the White House. Vide the Congressional Record, May 10, 1918, p. 6838, and June 12, 1918, p. 8293.
