. "This depends chiefly on _their_ being more or less
emphatic; and on the vowel _sound_ being long or short."--_Churchill's
Gram._, p. 182. "When they speak of a _monosyllable_ having the grave or
the acute accent."--_Walker's Key_, p. 328. Here some would erroneously
prefer the possessive case before "_having_;" but, if any amendment can be
effected it is only by inserting _as_ there. "The _event of Maria's loving_
her brother."--_O. B. Peirce's Gram._, p. 55. "Between that and the _man
being_ on it."--_Ib._, p. 59. "The fact of _James placing_
himself."--_Ib._, p. 166. "The event of the _persons' going_."--_Ib._, p.
165. Here _persons'_ is carelessly put for _person's_, i.e., _James's_: the
author was _parsing_ the puerile text, "James went into a store and placed
himself beside Horatio."--_Ib._, p. 164. And I may observe, in passing,
that Murray and Blair are both wrong in using commas with the adverb
_presently_ above.

OBS. 31.--It would be easy to fill a page with instances of these two
cases, the objective and the possessive, used, as I may say,
indiscriminately; nor is there any other principle by which we can
determine which of them is right, or which preferable, than that the
leading word in sense ought not to be made the adjunct in the construction,
and that the participle, if it remain such, ought rather to relate to its
noun, as being the adjunct, than to govern it in the possessive, as being
the principal term. To what extent either of these cases may properly be
used before the participle, or in what instances either of them may be
preferable to the other, it is not very easy to determine. Both are used a
great deal too often, filling with blemishes the style of many authors: the
possessive, because the participle is not the name of any thing that can be
possessed; the objective, because no construction can be right in which the
relation of the terms is not formed according to the sense. The former
usage I have already criticised to a great extent. Let one example suffice
here: "There can be no objection to a _syllable's being long_, on the
ground of _its not being so long_, or so much protracted, as some other
long syllables are."--_Murray's Gram._, 8vo, p. 242. Some would here prefer
_syllable_ to _syllable's_, but none would be apt to put _it_ for _its_,
without some other change. The sentence may be amended thus: "There can be
no objection to a _syllable as being long_, on the ground _that it is not
s