7.  In every troop of boys that whoop and run in each yard and square, a new-comer is as well and accurately weighed in the course of a few days, and stamped with his right number, as if he had undergone a formal trial of his strength, speed, and temper.

COMPOUND SENTENCES.

[Sidenote:  How formed.]

382.  The compound sentence is a combination of two or more simple or complex sentences.  While the complex sentence has only one main clause, the compound has two or more independent clauses making statements, questions, or commands.  Hence the definition,—­

[Sidenote:  Definition.]

383.  A compound sentence is one which contains two or more independent clauses.

This leaves room for any number of subordinate clauses in a compound sentence:  the requirement is simply that it have at least two independent clauses.

Examples of compound sentences:—­

[Sidenote:  Examples.]

(1) Simple sentences united: “He is a palace of sweet sounds and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man; he walks with arms akimbo; he soliloquizes.”

(2) Simple with complex: “The trees of the forest, the waving grass, and the peeping flowers have grown intelligent; and he almost fears to trust them with the secret which they seem to invite.”

(3) Complex with complex: “The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

384.  From this it is evident that nothing new is added to the work of analysis already done.

The same analysis of simple sentences is repeated in (1) and (2) above, and what was done in complex sentences is repeated in (2) and (3).

The division into members will be easier, for the cooerdinate independent statements are readily taken apart with the subordinate clauses attached, if there are any.

Thus in (1), the semicolons cut apart the independent members, which are simple statements; in (2), the semicolon separates the first, a simple member, from the second, a complex member; in (3), and connects the first and second complex members, and nor the second and third complex members.

[Sidenote:  Connectives.]

385.  The cooerdinate conjunctions and, nor, or but, etc., introduce independent clauses (see Sec. 297).

But the conjunction is often omitted in copulative and adversative clauses, as in Sec. 383 (1).  Another example is, “Only the star dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon-like ray” (adversative).

[Sidenote:  Study the thought.]

386.  The one point that will give trouble is the variable use of some connectives; as but, for, yet, while (whilst), however, whereas, etc.  Some of these are now conjunctions, now adverbs or prepositions; others sometimes cooerdinate, sometimes subordinate conjunctions.