[235] Some grammarians absurdly deny that persons and numbers are properties of verbs at all:  not indeed because our verbs have so few inflections, or because these authors wish to discard the little distinction that remains; but because they have some fanciful conception, that these properties cannot pertain to a verb.  Yet, when they come to their syntax, they all forget, that if a verb has no person and number, it cannot agree with a nominative in these respects.  Thus KIRKHAM:  “Person, strictly speaking, is a quality that belongs not to verbs, but to nouns and pronouns.  We say, however, that the verb must agree with its nominative in person, as well as in number.”—­Gram. in Familiar Lect., p. 46.  So J. W. WRIGHT:  “In truth, number and person are not properties of verbs.  Mr. Murray grants that, ’in philosophical strictness, both number and person might (say, may) be excluded from every verb, as they are, in fact, the properties of substantives, not a part of the essence of the verb.’”—­Philosophical Gram., p. 68.  This author’s rule of syntax for verbs, makes them agree with their nominatives, not in person and number, but in termination, or else in nobody knows what:  “A verb must vary its terminations, so as to agree with the nominative to which it is connected.”—­Ib., p. 168.  But Murray’s rule is, “A verb must agree with its nominative case in number and person:”  and this doctrine is directly repugnant to that interpretation of his words above, by which these gentlemen have so egregiously misled themselves and others.  Undoubtedly, both the numbers and the persons of all English verbs might be abolished, and the language would still be intelligible.  But while any such distinctions remain, and the verb is actually modified to form them, they belong as properly to this part of speech as they can to any other.  De Sacy says, “The distinction of number occurs in the verb;” and then adds, “yet this distinction does not properly belong to the verb, as it signifies nothing which can be numbered.”—­Fosdick’s Version, p. 64.  This deceptive reason is only a new form of the blunder which I have once exposed, of confounding the numbers in grammar with numbers in arithmetic.  J. M. Putnam, after repeating what is above cited from Murray, adds:  “The terms number and person, as applied to the verb are figurative.  The properties which belong to one thing, for convenience’ sake are ascribed to another.”—­Gram., p. 49.  Kirkham imagines, if ten men build a house, or navigate a ship round the world, they perform just “ten actions,” and no more.  “Common sense teaches you,” says he, “that there must be as many actions as there are actors; and that the verb when it has no form or ending to show it, is as strictly plural, as when it has.  So, in the phrase, ‘We walk,’ the verb walk is [of the] first person, because it expresses the actions performed by the speakers.  The verb, then, when correctly written, always agrees, in sense, with its nominative in number and person.”—­Kirkham’s Gram., p. 47.  It seems to me, that these authors do not very well know what persons or numbers, in grammar, are.