Hi, Ardith Hinton!
I read your message from  11.07.2018 15:56
about Stephen Leacock again.

 ak>>  BTW, can I say the last sentence without "us"?
 ak>>  "He hadn't told who was that 'high authority'".


 AH>             I would accept "He didn't say who that high
authority was".
 AH> I'm not sure how to account for my own discomfort about leaving out the
 AH> indirect object with "(to) tell" in this context, though,
because we do
 AH> it in other cases.  :-(


I see. The indirect object is a holy cow when we use "to tell".
;-) As we say in Russia -- a habit is the second nature. ;)


 ak>>  I know that American and British versions can be slightly
 ak>>  different.


 AH>             Yes... and different editors may have different ideas,
 AH> regardless of where they live or what audience the publisher hopes to
 AH> attract.

We probably can also say that the language has been changing towards
simplification and unification.

 AH>             I've now requested LAST LEAVES from the public library....  :-)

Yes, I also could not find it on-line.

Bye, Ardith!
Alexander Koryagin
ENGLISH_TUTOR 2018

--- Paul's Win98SE VirtualBox