new rule we shall not only go back to excessive use of _that_, but we may even increase the evil of too much _thating_. The word fills two important functions in present good use; to add the office of expressing all the restrictive uses of the relative pronouns, would probably increase _thating_ so as to render an English page unsightly. Take a sentence: “He said that that man that that boy said that he saw was not that man that that boy thought that he saw.” Mr. Ayres tries to show that certain sentences which contain _who_ and _which_ as relatives are ambiguous in meaning, and that the substitution of _that_ would make the meaning clear. As to such sentences, we may say that if they are really ambiguous in sense, the remedy is to reconstruct them. It is not necessary to use _that_ to pull them out of their obscurity. It is easy, however, to show that a detached sentence might mean something which it does not mean. The meaning of a text is helped out by the context. Aphorisms usually have not context auxiliaries, and usually are ambiguous; but the ordinary use of language is to express our meaning by paragraphs rather than by single sentences. Every ellipsis furnishes an opening for the entrance of small criticism; and ellipsis is one of the large facts of English writing. In short, the critic of ambiguous sentences will have abundant employment on the best writers, if he is allowed to break off any sentence from its yoke-fellows in the paragraph. We advise our readers not to make haste to adopt the rule of Mr. Ayres. The important question is: How do good writers employ the word _that_ in their books? The answer is that good English writers employ the word as a conjunction and as a demonstrative; and as a relative only when phrase idiom compels such use. In this country, the practice is to use _that_ a good deal as a relative; but there has been a great decline in this use of it, especially during the last thirty years. At the present time our best writers seem to be following the English practice. We hope that Mr. Ayres will not succeed in turning reform backward. With _who_ and _which_ to employ as relative pronouns—and occasional help from _that_, _what_, and _as_, in idioms—the English language is not poor. We need not recall the restrictive _that_ from its honorable retirement. EDMUND ABOUT.