He asked what to do with them.

In asking a question it is often possible to do it in two different ways, thus:

1. Which was to blame?

2. Which man was to blame?

You will see at once the difference in use of the word which in sentences 1 and 2. You have learned that we classify words as parts of speech according to their use in the sentence, and that a word may be one part of speech in one sentence, and a different one in another.

In sentence 1, which takes the place of a noun as subject of the sentence, and is a pronoun. In sentence 2, it modifies the subject, and is an adjective modifier.

In the following sentences, state which are interrogative pronouns and which are adjective modifiers:

Who is the author of Pilgrim's Progress? What does the Giant represent? Which thought of the key of promise? What wrong had they done? Which road did they take? What did they forget? Who followed them? Which gate did they open? He

asked what was the trouble. Christian asked what could be done. The Giant asked which death they would die.

Which are direct questions? Which indirect? Make a rule for the punctuation of direct and indirect questions.

Write sentences containing who, whose, whom, which, and what used as interrogative pronouns. Be careful not to use them here as adjective modifiers.

Grammar: Case of Interrogative Pronoun. In using the interrogative pronoun who, do not confuse the nominative case with the objective case. Do not write "Of who are you talking?" but "Of whom are you talking? Can you explain why? Not "Who did the author mean?" but "Whom did the author mean?"

Fill each blank in the following sentences with one of the two words given, and state your reason for selecting it:

Write sentences using the interrogative pronoun who correctly, and showing the nominative, possessive, and objective cases.

73

THE SUN

How far away from us do you think the sun is? On a fine summer's day, when we can see him clearly, it looks as if we had only to get into a balloon and reach him as he sits in the sky, and yet we know roughly that he is more than ninety-one millions of miles distant from 5 our earth.

These figures are so enormous that you cannot really grasp them. But imagine yourself in an express train, traveling at the rate of sixty miles an hour and never stopping. At that rate, if you wished to arrive at the sun 10 to-day, you would have been obliged to start one hundred and seventy-one years ago.

And when you arrived there, how large do you think you would find him to be? Our world itself is a very large place, and an express train would take nearly a month to travel round it. Yet even our whole globe is 5 nothing in size compared to the sun, for it only measures eight thousand miles across, while the sun measures more than eight hundred and fifty-two thousand.

Imagine for a moment that you could cut the sun and the earth each in half as you would cut an apple. If 10 then you were to lay the flat side of the half-earth on the flat side of the half-sun, it would take one hundred and six such earths to stretch across the face of the sun.

One of the best ways to form an idea of the whole size of the sun is to imagine it to be hollow, like an air ball, 15 and then see how many earths it would take to fill it. You would hardly believe that it would take one million, three hundred and thirty-one thousand globes the size of our world squeezed together. Just think, if a huge giant could travel all over the universe and gather worlds, all as 20 big as ours, and were to make first a heap of merely ten such worlds, how huge it would be! Then he must have a hundred such heaps of ten to make a thousand worlds; and then he must collect again a thousand times that thousand to make a million, and when he had stuffed them 25 all into the sun ball, he would still have only filled three quarters of it!

After hearing this you will not be astonished that such

a monster should give out an enormous quantity of light and heat, -so enormous that it is almost impossible to form any idea of it. Sir John Herschel has, indeed, tried to picture it for us. He found that a ball of lime with a flame playing round it (such as we use in magic lanterns) 5 becomes so violently hot that it gives the most brilliant artificial light we can get,—such that you cannot put your eye near it without injury. Yet if you wanted to have a light as strong as that of our sun, it would not be enough to make such a lime ball as big as the sun is. No, 10 you must make it as big as one hundred and forty-six suns, or more than one hundred and forty-six million. times as big as our earth, in order to get the right amount of light. Then you would have a tolerably good artificial sun; for we know that the body of the sun gives out an 15 intense white light, just as the lime ball does, and that, like it, it has an atmosphere of glowing gases round it.

But perhaps we get the best idea of the mighty heat and light of the sun by remembering how few of the rays which dart out on all sides from this fiery ball can reach 20 our tiny globe, and yet how powerful they are. Look at the globe of a lamp in the middle of the room, and see how its light pours out on all sides and into every corner; then take a grain of seed, which will very well represent the size of our earth, and hold it up at a distance from the 25 lamp. How very few of all those rays which are filling the room fall on the little seed, and just so few does our

earth catch of the rays which dart out from the sun. And yet this small quantity (one two-thousand-millionth part of the whole) does nearly all of the work of our world. ARABELLA BURTON BUCKLEY: Fairy Land of Science.

universe, all created things, all heavenly bodies; artificial, not found in nature, produced by man.

You will notice that the author has tried to make clear some things that would be very hard for you to realize, by leading you to compare them with other things that you know very well. Which of these comparisons has helped you most to realize the distance of the sun? the size? the heat?

Spelling.

Universe, artificial, comparative, millionth, balloon.

Grammar: Conjunctive or Relative Pronouns. I. Who, which, and what are not always used to ask questions, e.g., "Giant Despair had a wife, who was named Diffidence." This sentence might have been written thus: "Giant Despair had a wife, and she was named Diffidence." And is a conjunction, and who is used in a similar way in the first form of the sentence given. But and simply connects, while who refers to wife, and is therefore a pronoun. Since this pronoun acts as a conjunction, it is called a conjunctive pronoun.

There are four conjunctive pronouns who, which, what, and that. The noun to which the conjunctive pronoun refers is called its antecedent. As conjunctive pronouns always refer (or relate) to antecedents, they are also called relative pronouns.

Who changes its form according to its use in the sentence. For example:

Giant Despair had a wife who (subject form) was named Diffidence.

Columbus, whose (possessive form) name you have often heard, discovered America.

Columbus, of whom (object form) you have often heard, discovered America.