RULE III.

Words Repeated Rhetorically.*

The dash is used before a word or phrase repeated in an exclamatory or an emphatic manner.

EXAMPLES.

1. Shall I, who was born, I might almost say, but certainly brought up, in the tent of my father, that most excellent general — shall I, the conqueror of Spain and Gaul, and not only of the Alpine nations, but of the Alps themselves - shall I compare myself with this half-year captain? -a captain, before whom should one place the two armies without their ensigns, I am persuaded he would not know to which of them he is consul.

2. Newton was a Christian; Newton! whose mind burst forth from the fetters cast by nature on our finite conceptions; - Newton! whose science was truth, and the foundation of whose knowledge of it was philosophy; not those visionary and arrogant presumptions which too often usurp its name, but philosophy resting on the basis of mathematics, which, like figures, cannot lie; - Newton! who carried the line and rule to the utmost barriers of creation, and explored the principles by which, no doubt, all created matter is held together and exists.

REMARKS.

a. Before the iteration of the words "shall I," in the first example, dashes are put without any other point, to show that what precedes is unfinished. After the expression, "this half-year captain," a note of interrogation is placed, because the question terminates here.

b. In the second example, semicolons are introduced before the dashes, in order to separate with greater clearness the various members, some of which are divisible into clauses. But, in the more simple kinds of sentences (as in the first four under the Oral Exercise, p. 109), a comma will be sufficient before the dash.

c. After expressions of the kind under consideration, it is seldom necessary to put the exclamatory mark; as, "Edmund Burke was a man who added to the pride, not merely of his country, but of his species; a man who robed the very soul of inspiration in the splendors of a pure and overpowering eloquence." The construction of the language used, and the nature of the sentiment, will readily indicate what point, if any, should be inserted.

* TO THE TEACHER. — As a word or phrase, when repeated in a rhetorical manner, is called by some elocutionists an echo, the teacher may, if he thinks proper, adopt the term.

d. When a parenthesis is introduced before an iterated expression, the dash should both precede and follow the parenthetical marks;

Explain the reason why dashes are inserted in these sentences:

You speak like a boy,- like a boy who thinks the old, gnarled oak can be twisted as easily as the young sapling. Never is virtue left without sympathy, sympathy dearer and tenderer for the misfortune that has tried it, and proved its fidelity. There are, indeed, I acknowledge, to the honor of the human kind, — there are persons in the world who feel that the possession of good dispositions is their best reward.

All great discoveries, not purely accidental, will be gifts to insight; and the true man of science will be he who can best ascend into the thoughts of God, — he who burns before the throne in the clearest, purest, mildest light of reason.

Man is led to the conception of a Power and an Intelligence superior to his own, and adequate to the production and maintenance of all that he sees in nature; -a Power and Intelligence to which he may well apply the term "infinite."

mea

Can Parliament be so dead to its dignity and duty as to give its sanction to measures thus obtruded and forced upon them? sures, my lords, which have reduced this late-flourishing kingdom to scorn and contempt.

He hears the raven's cry; and shall he not hear, and will he not avenge, the wrongs that his nobler animals suffer? wrongs that cry out against man, from youth to age, in the city and in the field, by the way and by the fireside.

Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmother Field once was, and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer — (here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted) - the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious.

EXERCISES TO BE WRITTEN.

Let dashes be inserted before the echoes in the following passages:

The voices in the waves are always whispering to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love; of love eternal and illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world or by the end of time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisible country far away.

We must take a wakeful and active interest, that seeks them out; an interest that examines into the causes of their degradation, and labors to raise them to a more just social position; an interest that comes from faith in man as the child of God, and from faith in God as the heavenly Father; an interest that never despairs of the fallen or the lost, but makes Him who was the friend of publicans and sinners its model.

Truth should be enshrined in our inmost hearts, and become the object of our fervent contemplation, our earnest desire and aspiration. Consecrate, above all things, truth, whatever prejudices it may proscribe, whatever advantages it may forfeit, and whatever privileges it may level; truth, though its recompense should be the privations of poverty or the darkness of the dungeon; truth, the first lesson for the child, and the last word of the dying; truth, the world's regenerator, God's image on earth, the essence of virtue in the character, the foundation of happiness in the heart; truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

It is the sorrow which draws sweetness from the affections, and is hallowed by conscience, the sorrow that mingles its sanctifying drop in the cup of virtuous love and pure-souled friendship, the sorrow which mortifies young ambition, and tempers presumptuous enthusiasm, the sorrow which makes us feel our weakness and inefficiency, when we have put forth earnest efforts to serve the truth and aid human progress, this is the sorrow which chastens and exalts the spirit, and fills it with a noble seriousness, and binds it by holier ties to that ideal of perfection and blessedness which never perishes from the trust and the aspiration of the true servants of God.

It remains with you, then, to decide whether that freedom at whose voice the kingdoms of Europe awoke from the sleep of ages, to run a career of virtuous emulation in every thing great and good; the freedom which dispelled the mists of superstition, and invited the nations to behold their God; whose magic torch kindled the rays of genius, the enthusiasm of poetry, and the flame of eloquence; the freedom which poured into our lap opulence and arts, and embellished life with innumerable institutions and improvements, till it became a theatre of wonders; it is for you to decide, whether this freedom shall yet survive, or be covered with a funeral pall, and wrapped in eternal gloom.

RULE IV.

Intermediate Expressions* which are Divisible.

The dash is generally used before and after the longer intermediate expressions, when they are separable into portions requiring points between them.

EXAMPLES.

1. The whole deportment of a child is delightful. Its smile always so ready when there is no distress, and so soon recurring when that distress has passed away is like an opening of the sky, showing heaven beyond. 2. The archetypes, the ideal forms of things without, if not, as some philosophers have said, in a metaphysical sense, yet in a moral sense,exist within us.

REMARKS.

a. When a sentence, being assertive, can be read without a point between the parts into which a parenthetical expression is introduced, that is, on the supposition of its being excluded, - none will be requisite along with the dashes; as in the first example under the rule, which, if the intermediate clauses were omitted, would read thus: "Its smile is like an opening of the sky, showing heaven beyond."

b. But when, without the intermediate words, such a sentence would require a comma or any other grammatical mark at the place where they occur, both the dashes must be preceded by that mark, as in the second example.

c. The parenthetical portion, even though incapable of subdivision, is enclosed by dashes, when it contains an echo of what precedes, or is thrown in by way of explanation; as, "It was under the influence of impulse the impulse of nature on his own poetic spirit that Burns went forth singing in glory and in joy on the mountain-side." (See p. 108.)

d. If a parenthesis, distinguished by dashes instead of the proper parenthetical marks, is expressive of inquiry or emotion, a note of interrogation or of exclamation should be used before the second dash, whatever be the point, if any, required before the first; as, "How little may it not be? the most considerate feel the import of a grateful acknowledgment to God!" "In conformity with a rule of the Trotters, never to flinch from duty,' I stand here, not to make a speech, for who would expect me to make a speech?

but to

* TO THE TEACHER. - For the merely grammatical mode of pointing parentheses and intermediate expressions, see pp. 99-102, and pp. 34–6.

thank you for the honor you have done us, and to give you some reminiscences of the Trotter family."

e. Where one parenthetic clause is contained within another, both of which should be distinctly perceived, that which is less connected in construction, whatever the order, should be enclosed by the usual marks, and the other set off by dashes, as in the following lines:

"Sir Smug," he cries (for lowest at the board

Just made fifth chaplain of his patron lord,
His shoulders witnessing, by many a shrug,
How much his feelings suffered sat Sir Smug),

"Your office is to winnow false from true:

Come, prophet, drink; and tell us what think you."

ORAL EXERCISE.

Show how these sentences exemplify the Rule and the Remarks: —

The true test of a great man that, at least, which must secure his place among the highest order of great men· is his having been

in advance of his age.

In youth - that is to say, somewhere between the period of childhood and manhood there is commonly a striking development of sensibility and imagination.

The magnificent creations of Southey's poetry piled up, like clouds at sunset, in the calm serenity of his capacious intellect have always been duly appreciated by poetical students and critical readers; but by the public at large they are neglected.

In the heathen world, where mankind had no divine revelation, but followed the impulse of nature alone, religion was often the basis of civil government.

Demosthenes, Julius Cæsar, Henry the Fourth of France, Lord Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Franklin, Washington, Napoleon, — different as they were in their intellectual and moral qualities,

renowned as hard workers.

were all

to Socrates and

When we look up to the first rank of genius, Plato and Pythagoras, to Paul and Luther, to Bacon and Leibnitz and Newton, we find they are men who bow before the infinite sanctities which their souls discern.

-

Religion who can doubt it? - is the noblest of themes for the exercise of intellect.

I wished oh! why should I not have wished? that all my fellow-men possessed the blessings of a benign civilization and a pure form of Christianity.

*TO THE TEACHER.

Reasons should be assigned by the class, not only for the dashes introduced into this exercise, but for the use of the points accompanying them in some of the sentences, and for their omission in others.