Exercise 87. Comment on the use of articles with substantivized parts of speech

1. "Let me tell you about this pheasant-shooting business," he said. "First of all, it is practiced only by the rich. Only the very rich can afford to rear pheasants just for the fun of shooting them down when they grow up." 2. The ancient proverb runs: "Say the pleasant, but not the untrue; say the true, but not the unpleasant."

3. He told me he wore the sweater because navy-blue hardly showed up at all in the dark. Black was even better, he said.

4. The sky was a faintly lucid grey and the sea was a lightless grey, and the rocks were a dark fuzzy greyish brown. 5. She was a part, an evidence of some pure uncracked confidence in the good which was never there for me again. 6. Her eyes gazed out with such a fey puzzled look like a young savage. 7. On the whole I am rather relieved that her letter can be taken as a simple negative. 8. A word is enough to the wise. 9. I suppose it's difficult for the young to realize that one may be old without being a fool. 10. There is no place for the wicked. 11. She was not an intellectual or bookish girl, she had the wisdom of the innocents, she was at home in time and space. 12. Two wrongs do not make a right. 13. And eating too much breakfast is a thoroughly bad start to the day. I am however not at all averse to elevenses which can come in great variety. 14. Did one know what one was choosing? Certainly not. There are such chasms of might-have-beens in any human life. 15. "I was supposed to have lunch with a customer, but I'll put him off." Eve did not believe it was a him. 16. And you're going to meet an old friend and talk to him? - It's not a him, it's a her! 17. Life is full of ifs and nots. 18. It's a racing must. 19. Three lefts and two rights and we are at home. 20. With all these perhapses you feel put down and neglected.

Exercise 88.