Exercises Based on “Old Put” The Patriot, by Frederick A. Ober New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1904

     I doubt that many students will be reading Ober's “Old Put,” so perhaps a brief explanation of the reason for these exercises is appropriate. I had been using the "Find" function to search through Holbrook's Why the Crocodile Has a Wide Mouth and Other Nature Myths for examples of words that function as adverbs, as prepositions, and as subordinate conjunctions. I was finding examples of words such as "after," "before," "for," etc., but the one word that I could not find was "since." In my office, I had a few free minutes, and was browsing through the texts in Project Gutenberg. With "Old Put" on the screen, I wondered if I might find "since." I did, and I collected every sentence in that text that includes the word. [Gutenberg Text # 17049]
     Having done so, I hesitated to take the time to use them all in exercises, but decided to do so for two reasons. First, it is interesting to note how frequently "since" is used as an adverb, and how infrequently it is used as a preposition, at least in this text. Then too, there is the example of "since-famous." (See the exercise below on appositives.) My second reason was that many of the sentences can be used, at least temporarily, as exercises for other constructions.
 

     "Since" also appears in the following three sentences. They involvwe different complex questions and have been put in a collection document for exercises in the upper grade levels.

1. The entrance-way is at present too low and narrow to admit the passage of a  boy, much less of a full-grown man; but that is said to have been caused by the falling in of the rocks, in the lapse of time since Putnam's day.

 2. In January, 1778, we find him at West Point, directing the men of Parson's brigade where to break ground—frozen ground, at that, with snow two feet deep above it—for the first fort at the picturesque post on the Hudson since become historic.

3. Washington wrote, commending him for his action in suppressing the mutiny; and as for the feat now to be mentioned, it may be said to speak for itself. In fact, it has been speaking, now, for a century and a quarter, since it is that famous ride down the stone steps of Horseneck Height to which reference is made.