Read the jokes and comment on the functions of the Participles and Participial Complexes.

v The scene in the film was a tense one, and the audience sat enthralled. Suddenly the hero slapped the heroine in the face.

In the silence that followed, a young voice was heard asking: ‘Why doesn’t she hit back like you do, Mummy?’

v A lady in Vermont wrote to the Department of Agriculture and asked for advice on the care of chickens.

‘Every morning for the past month,’ she said, ‘I have observed three or four of my hens lying on their backs with their feet in the air. What is the cause of this?’

The secretary of Agriculture consulted three assistants and some other specialists. They sent the lady a telegram: ‘Your hens,’ it read, ‘are dead.’

v It being reported that Jaky Lamb had, in a moment of passion, knocked down one of her pages with a stool, the poet Moore, to whom this was told by Lord Stradford, observed: “Oh, nothing is more natural for a literary lady to double down a page.’

‘I’d rather,’ replied his lordship, ‘advise her to turn over a new leaf.’

v The school inspector, who had been touring the classrooms, entered the headmaster’s study accompanied by a pupil. ‘I asked this boy who caused the walls of Rome to fall down, and he said it wasn’t him.’

‘Well,’ said the headmaster, ’possibly it wasn’t, he’s a truthful boy, as a rule.’

Just then, the chairman of the school governors came along, the headmaster placed the matter before him. The chairman said: ‘Have them repaired and say nothing further about it.’