presently found that to such a parson a grammar could be of use at
times. It is because, if he does not know the WERE'S and the WAS'S and
the MAYBE'S and the HAS-BEENS'S apart, confusions and uncertainties can
arise. He can get the idea that a thing is going to happen next week
when the truth is that it has already happened week before last. Even
more previously, sometimes. Examination and inquiry showed me that
the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded and
straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the Verb that mixed the
hands, it was the Verb that lacked stability, it was the Verb that had
no permanent opinion about anything, it was the Verb that was always
dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble.

Further examination, further inquiry, further reflection, confirmed this
judgment, and established beyond peradventure the fact that the Verb was
the storm-center. This discovery made plain the right and wise course to
pursue in order to acquire certainty and exactness in understanding the
statements which the newspaper was daily endeavoring to convey to me: I
must catch a Verb and tame it. I must find out its ways, I must spot
its eccentricities, I must penetrate its disguises, I must intelligently
foresee and forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely
to try upon a stranger in given circumstances, I must get in on its main
shifts and head them off, I must learn its game and play the limit.

I had noticed, in other foreign languages, that verbs are bred in
families, and that the members of each family have certain features or
resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it from the
other families--the other kin, the cousins and what not. I had noticed
that this family-mark is not usually the nose or the hair, so to speak,
but the tail--the Termination--and that these tails are quite definitely
differentiated; insomuch that an expert can tell a Pluperfect from a
Subjunctive by its tail as easily and as certainly as a cowboy can tell
a cow from a horse by the like process, the result of observation and
culture. I should explain that I am speaking of legitimate verbs, those
verbs which in the slang of the grammar are called Regular. There are
other--I am not meaning to conceal this; others called Irregulars, born
out of wedlock, of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally
destitute of family resemblances, as regards to all features, tail