Of all these various forms or cases of _man_, the language has freed itself, excepting the genitive singular, _mannes_, and the nominative plural, _men_. These have been retained, not by accident, or neglect, but at the dictate of common sense, because convenience and intelligibility required their use. It was found necessary to distinguish the plural from the singular; and the genitive or possessive idea from the simple and absolute; but _man_ as a dative or accusative singular, and _men_ as the same in the plural, were found quite as useful and convenient as the old inflected forms; and therefore (or therefore finally and in a great measure) the latter were discarded. The genitive or possessive has been retained; but it has slightly changed its form; by contraction only, however; _mannes_ has become _man’s_. The old sign of the possessive was _es_; and it is this, and not the pronoun _his_ (as once was supposed) that is represented in our possessive case, in which the apostrophe merely marks the elision of the old _e_. There is really no good reason for the use of the apostrophe, none which would not apply equally to many other cases in which no elision is marked. In the Elizabethan era it was not used, and with no consequent confusion. Mans folly, the boys hat, Johns coat, are as clear in meaning as they would be with the apostrophe; and the possible confusion of the possessive with the plural, as in that fancy of the girls, and that fancy of the girl’s is so remote and so very unlikely as to be worthy of little consideration. As to English in its earliest form (Anglo-Saxon) suffice it here to say in this regard that it was so largely an inflected language, that is, it varied the forms of its words so numerously to express time of action, mode of action, person, number, case, and gender, that it is in this respect almost as unlike modern English as Greek is, and is little less difficult of acquirement to the English speaking student of to-day than Latin. Its very articles had gender forms as well as case forms; and, moreover, like the Mæso-Gothic and like the Greek it had preserved the old dual number (for the expression of a plural of two) although only in the personal pronoun. A comparative examination of the pronoun of the first person and of the present tense of the verb _to have_ in their ancient and modern forms will show the mode and the reason of the changes by which English has assumed its present character. OLD ENGLISH PRONOUN OF THE FIRST PERSON. SINGULAR. DUAL. PLURAL. N. _ic_, I. _wit_, us two. _we_, we. G. _min_, of me. _uncer_, of us two. _ure_, of us. D. _me_, to, for, with me. _unc_, to or for us two. _us_, to, for, with us. A. _me_, me (objectively). _unc_, us two. _us_, us.