O, it was impious; it was unmanly; it was poor and pitiful!
Have not you too gone about the earth like an evil genius; blasting the fair fruits of peace and industry; plundering, ravaging, killing, without law, without justice, merely to gratify an insatiable lust for dominion?
What a glorious monument of human invention, that has thus triumphed over wind and wave; has brought the ends of the earth in communion; has established an interchange of blessings, pouring into the sterile regions of the north all the luxuries of the south; diffused the light of knowledge and the charities of cultivated life; and has thus bound together those scattered portions of the human race, between which Nature seemed to have thrown an insurmountable barrier!
LESSON LX.
The Colon.
The Colon consists of two periods placed one above the other, thus :
Sometimes the passage ending with a colon is to be read with the voice suspended; but it should generally be read with the falling inflection of the voice.
The general rule, when you come to a colon, is to stop just long enough to count three; or three times as long as you are directed to pause at a comma.