quarter of an hour daily devoted to this treatment will effect a
remarkable improvement, even when the patient happens to think there is no
room for improvement.

3. Grammar, I suppose, is taught in girls' schools on approved modern
principles; nevertheless few women seem to have any acquaintance with it.
Yet grammar is not a difficult study, nor a lengthy one, and an
understanding knowledge of its principles is of the greatest assistance in
the formation of a good literary style. This is a truism: that is why it
needs saying again.

You will find Dr. Richard Morris's _Primer of English Grammar_
(Macmillans, _1s_.), with Mr. John Wetherell's _Exercises on
Morris's English Grammar_ (same publishers and price), very useful,
and, though they are small books, quite adequate to your needs. Both can
be mastered in a month. The first business is to learn to parse. To parse
is "to explain the duty each word performs in a sentence: that is, to tell
the relation each word bears to the rest in a sentence:" the definition
clearly shows how indispensable to a writer is some skill in parsing. Of
course many of the exercises are set obviously for children, but
sufficient remain to puzzle the woman of average intelligence. That lady
might, for example, have a difficulty in parsing the italicised words in
the following: "My cap, having _stuck on_ a long _time_, now
went _whirling_ down the lane." Afterwards comes analysis--the
breaking up of a sentence into its component parts--not less urgent than
parsing. This branch of the subject is treated well and thoroughly in Mr.
Wetherell's book, and his exercises should be worked through
conscientiously. Note further, in the same primer, the division relating
to syntax, and especially the exercises on pp. 74, 75. The chapter on
conjunctions is also of serious importance to women.