MSGID: 2:221/6.0 6200c960   
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   TID: hpt/lnx 1.9 2022-01-30   
   Hello, all.   
      
   Native speakers have frequenly corrected my questions worded   
   like "How to stroke a cat?", saying that this is not a  com-   
   plete  sentence, but a phrase, which may work only without a   
   question mark as a title to a chapter in the cat man page.   
      
   What say you, then, to the following question from Dunsany's   
   "King  of  Elfland's  Daughter" -- the  most  poetic work of   
   prose about the Good people (followed  closely  by  Machen's   
   "The White People"):   
      
      Sorrowfully then that parliament of Erl saw that their   
      plans to have a magic lord had failed; they  were  all   
      old  men,  and  the hope that they had had for so long   
      being gone they turned less easily to newer plans than   
      they had to the plan that they made so long ago.  What   
      should they do now, they  said?  How  come  by  magic?   
      What could they do that the world should remember Erl?   
      Twelve old men without magic.   They  sat  there  over   
      their mead, and it could not lighten their sadness.   
      
   If "How to come by magic?" is not grammatical, why "How come   
   by magic?" is?  How explain this difference?   
   ---    
    * Origin: nntp://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/6.0)   
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