Underscore all the verbs in the following and note the participles, the
infinitives and the various time forms; also the helping verbs:
What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport of
war? To my knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the
British village of Dumrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From
these, by certain 'natural enemies' of the French, there are selected,
say thirty able-bodied men; Dumrudge, at her own expense, has suckled
and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them
up to manhood and trained them in the crafts, so that one can weave,
another build and another hammer. Nevertheless, amidst much weeping
and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red and shipped away,
at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or, say only to the
south of Spain, and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot
in the south of Spain are thirty similar French artisans, in like
manner, wending their ways; till at length the thirty stand facing the
thirty, each with his gun in his hand. Straightway, the word 'Fire' is
given, and they blow the souls out of one another; and in the place of
the sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses,
which it must bury and anew shed tears for.
Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the devil is, not the smallest!
They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so
wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some
mutual helpfulness between them.
How then?
Simpleton! Their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one
another, had these poor blockheads shoot.--_Carlyle_.