(4) The pronouns of the first and second persons are all changed to the third person.  Sometimes it is clearer to introduce the antecedent of the pronoun instead.

Other examples of indirect discourse have been given in Part I., under interrogative pronouns, interrogative adverbs, and the subjunctive mood of verbs.

Exercise.

Rewrite the following extract from Irving’s “Sketch Book,” and change it to a direct quotation:—­

He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Catskill Mountains had always been haunted by strange beings; that it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half-moon, being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river and the great city called by his name; that his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at ninepins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant peals of thunder.

VERBALS.

PARTICIPLES.

[Sidenote:  Careless use of the participial phrase.]

450.  The following sentences illustrate a misuse of the participial phrase:—­

     Pleased with the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” my first collection was of
     John Bunyan’s works.—­B.  FRANKLIN.

     My farm consisted of about twenty acres of excellent land, having
     given a hundred pounds for my predecessor’s goodwill.—­GOLDSMITH.

     Upon asking how he had been taught the art of a cognoscente so
     suddenly, he assured me that nothing was more easy.—­Id.

     Having thus run through the causes of the sublime, my first
     observation will be found nearly true.—­BURKE

     He therefore remained silent till he had repeated a paternoster,
     being the course which his confessor had enjoined.—­SCOTT

Compare with these the following:—­

[Sidenote:  A correct example.]

     Going yesterday to dine with an old acquaintance, I had the
     misfortune to find his whole family very much dejected.—­ADDISON.

[Sidenote:  Notice this.]

The trouble is, in the sentences first quoted, that the main subject of the sentence is not the same word that would be the subject of the participle, if this were expanded into a verb.

[Sidenote:  Correction.]

Consequently one of two courses must be taken,—­either change the participle to a verb with its appropriate subject, leaving the principal statement as it is; or change the principal proposition so it shall make logical connection with the participial phrase.

For example, the first sentence would be, either “As I was pleased, ... my first collection was,” etc., or “Pleased with the ’Pilgrim’s Progress,’ I made my first collection John Bunyan’s works.”