TO show the semantic power of the three rhetorical devices that we have taken up the preceding columns — namely the resumptive modifier, the summative modifier, and the free modifier — it's tempting to simply mint new specimens of each as examples. That's actually what we have been doing so far, a process that, of course, is very much like using bridal stand-ins to go through rehearsals for a grand wedding. But this time we'll see all three of the semantic brides for real, their grooms three of the finest stylists the English language has ever produced: the breathtakingly iconoclastic American journalist H. L. Mencken, the towering English historian Edward Gibbon, and the eminent American naturalist-philosopher Loren Eiseley.

Let's begin by taking a look at Mencken's artistry in using resumptive, summative, and free modifiers in this vaulting, magnificent prose from In Defense of Women [all underscoring in this and in subsequent passages mine]: