Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1874 — Sit and Set, Lay and Lie. [ARTICLE]

Sit and Set, Lay and Lie.

The two words “ sit” and “ get” are too often mistaken for each other. When a' grammar-class is asked, for the first time, if it is right to say “ hens set,” the “ court sets,” one-half of them, perhaps, will vote one way and the other half the other. The court means the Judge or Judges; the Judge sits, court sits, the jury sits, hens sit, birds sit. ‘'Setting hen” is.wrong: hens are riot “setters 15 or pointers. Set requires an objective case; we set a chair, but we sit in it. There is«A similar difliculty in the use of “ lie” and “ lay.” In families whose hens “ set” everything “lays,” and all “lay abed.” The quoted words are wrong. Lav means to place, and requires an objective, as “ the hen lays eggs.” “ Mow I jay me.” We should say the book Jupt <>n the table ; he lies abdd; lies low.; everybody lies, if you please, but, nobody lays unless he has something: to lay. —— .‘-r-' - —The length oft railways throughout the world exceeds 2,000.000 miles, and the capital invested in them in the lasi thirty years i#>about $4,1X10,000,000. —Pretty stiff—a Maine factory has turned out 175 tons of starch this year.