Sentence No. 149 · 23 August 2026
So the absence of a genial mental atmosphere is not commonly recognised by children who have never known it.
Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
Samuel Butler — The Way of All Flesh (1903) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The relative clause 'who have never known it' must attach to 'children', the noun it modifies — relative pronouns like 'who' always follow their antecedent, so this fragment can only sit at the end.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 7 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A narrator reflects on how children absorb their circumstances. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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