"Nowru-Cumva Darcy News."
Sin—The real answer to and his query as to the verb to be used in connexion with "there are a number of men" is that it is a fooish way of constructing a sentence. Take for instance the sentence number of houses is to Tet." That a correct sentence grammatical but a poor sentence "structurally The really sensible thing to do is to put the noun that is really the subject of the sentence in its proper place. Such phrases as "a num ber of," "a quantity of," and so on don't really mean anything and should, therefore, be discarded. If houses are to let, why not say so? If men are required, why insert such useless words as "a number of?" A "number might mean two or a million, Tam, ete.
Gro. H. Misseste,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.