[145] “They never yet had separated for their daylight beds, without a climax to their orgy, something like the present scene.”—­The Crock of Gold, p. 13.  “And straps never called upon to diminish that long whity-brown interval between shoe and trowser.”—­Ib., p. 24.  “And he gave them victual in abundance.”—­2 Chron., xi, 23.  “Store of victual.”—­Ib., verse 11.

[146] The noun physic properly signifies medicine, or the science of medicine:  in which sense, it seems to have no plural.  But Crombie and the others cite one or two instances in which physic and metaphysic are used, not very accurately, in the sense of the singular of physics and metaphysics.  Several grammarians also quote some examples in which physics, metaphysics, politics, optics, and other similar names of sciences are used with verbs or pronouns of the singular number; but Dr. Crombie justly says the plural construction of such words, “is more common, and more agreeable to analogy.”—­On Etym. and Syntax, p. 27.

[147] “Benjamin Franklin, following the occupation of a compositor in a printing-office, at a limited weekly wage,” &c.—­Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, No. 232.  “WAGE, Wages, hire.  The singular number is still frequently used, though Dr. Johnson thought it obsolete.”—­Glossary of Craven. 1828.

[148] Our lexicographers generally treat the word firearms as a close compound that has no singular.  But some write it with a hyphen, as fire-arms.  In fact the singular is sometimes used, but the way of writing it is unsettled.  Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines a carbine as, “a small sort of fire arm;” Webster has it, “a short gun, or fire arm;” Worcester, “a small fire-arm;” Cobb, “a sort of small firearms.”  Webster uses “fire-arm,” in defining “stock.”

[149] “But, soon afterwards, he made a glorious amend for his fault, at the battle of Plataea.”—­Hist.  Reader, p. 48.

[150] “There not a dreg of guilt defiles.”—­Watts’s Lyrics, p. 27.

[151] In Young’s Night Thoughts, (N. vii, l. 475.) lee, the singular of lees, is found; Churchill says, (Gram., p. 211,) “Prior has used lee, as the singular of lees;” Webster and Bolles have also both forms in their dictionaries:—­

   “Refine, exalt, throw down their poisonous lee,
    And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss.”—­Young.

[152] “The ‘Procrustean bed’ has been a myth heretofore; it promises soon to be a shamble and a slaughterhouse in reality.”—­St. Louis Democrat, 1855.