The plan that has been followed in preparing this book is to carry the student's mind gradually forward from the more easy to the less easy, from the better known to the unknown. The present book is an adaptation of a manual prepared by the same author in India, where English is studied with extraordinary keenness, in an attempt to find the best means of teaching it. It is best to assume that the average student does not know very much to start with, and that every student must be well versed in the principles of modern English, before he can be qualified to begin the much more difficult task of tracing these to their sources. -- from the preface.