[423] The following is an example, but it is not very intelligible, nor would it be at all amended, if the pronoun were put in the possessive case:  “I sympathize with my sable brethren, when I hear of them being spared even one lash of the cart-whip.”—­REV.  DR. THOMPSON:  Garrison, on Colonization, p. 80.  And this is an other, in which the possessive pronoun would not be better:  “But, if the slaves wish, to return to slavery, let them do so; not an abolitionist will turn out to stop them going back.”—­Antislavery Reporter, Vol.  IV, p. 223.  Yet it might be more accurate to say—­“to stop them from going back.”  In the following example from the pen of Priestley, the objective is correctly used with as, where some would be apt to adopt the possessive:  “It gives us an idea of him, as being the only person to whom it can be applied.”—­Priestley’s Gram., p. 151.  Is not this better English than to say, “of his being the only person?” The following is from the pen of a good scholar:  “This made me remember the discourse we had together, at my house, about me drawing constitutions, not as proposals, but as if fixed to the hand.”—­WILLIAM PENN:  Letter to Algernon Sidney, Oct. 13th, 1681.  Here, if me is objectionable, my without of would be no less so.  It might be better grammar to say, “about my drawing of constitutions.”

[424] Sometimes the passive form is adopted, when there is no real need of it, and when perhaps the active would be better, because it is simpler; as, “Those portions of the grammar are worth the trouble of being committed to memory.”—­Dr. Barrow’s Essays, p. 109.  Better, perhaps:—­“worth the trouble of committing to memory:”  or,—­“worth the trouble committing them to memory.”  Again:  “What is worth being uttered at all, is worth being spoken in a proper manner.”—­Kirkham’s Elocution, p. 68.  Better, perhaps:  “What is worth uttering at all, is worth uttering in a proper manner.”—­G.  Brown.

[425] “RULE.—­When the participle expresses something of which the noun following is the DOER, it should have the article and preposition; as, ’It was said in the hearing of the witness.’  When it expresses something of which the noun following is not the doer, but the OBJECT, both should be omitted; as, ’The court spent some time in hearing the witness.’”—­BULLIONS, Prin. of E. Gram., p. 108; Analyt. and Pract.  Gram., 181.

[426] This doctrine is far from being true.  See Obs. 12th, in this series, above.—­G.  B.