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"Oh, Peyton! what fearfully, selfishly long sentences you and Douglass inflict upon each other, and upon me! The colons and semicolons gather along the lines of conversation like an army of martyrs, and to my stupidly weary ears that last, that final period, was a most 'sweet boon' a crowning blessing.
In restoring the author's works to their integrity, I have considered the punctuation as wholly in my power; for what could be their care of colons and commas, who corrupted words and sentences.
It is only giving him the same liberty that Lord Timothy Dexter allowed his readers in the matter of punctuation, by leaving all stops out of his sentences, and printing at the end of his book a page of commas, semicolons, colons, periods, notes of interrogation and exclamation, with which the reader was expected to "pepper" the pages as he might see fit.
And it may be well to remark, that every reformatory school in Europe, even those altogether penal, as Parkhurst in England, and Mettray in France, have had some measure of success. Eighty-nine per cent. of the colons, or convicts, at Mettray, have become respectable and useful; while, of the youth sent to the ordinary jails and prisons, seventy-five per cent. are totally lost.
Among our present writers, the art of punctuation is a lost accomplishment; and it is usual now to find writings with hardly anything but full stops; colons and semicolons are almost obsolete; commas are neglected, or misused; and our slovenly pages are strewn with dashes, the last resources of an untidy thinker, the certain witnesses to a careless and unfinished sentence.
In many of them the colon was distended to double its natural size throughout its whole length, with a small hole through the center, and as far as could be learned, these last cases spoken of had regular evacuations of the bowels each day. Many of the colons contained large maggots from four to six inches long, and pockets of eggs and maggots, while blood and pus were frequently present."
You was not master of a farthing." These are four commas; but the two following members are both colons; "Incurristi omens in columnas, in alienos insanus insanisti." "You rushed like a madman upon your best supporters; you vented your fury on your enemies withput mercy."
Line after line of neat, small writing, quite different from what his friends knew in letters or on envelopes, flowed from his pen. It was his "press" handwriting, plain, rapid, and as legible as print. The punctuation was attended to with singular care: the commas broad and heavy, the colons like the kisses in a child's letter, round and black.
"Why do they attack us by clandestine measures? why do they collect forces against us from our own deserters?" In the former passage there are two commas: in the latter he first makes use of the colon, and afterwards of the period: but the period is not a long one, as only consisting of two colons, and the whole terminates in spondees.
But it was the interest of both to work well together, and it was the duty of the landlord to assist the metayer as much as possible, especially when times were hard. On this estate the colons were housed free, but they paid one-third of the taxes. At the time of sowing, the seed was found by the landlord, but the colon returned half of the amount when the crop was gathered.
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