“I only feel—Farewell—Farewell!”—Byron.
“You will think me foolish;—but—but—may it not be that some invisible angel has been attracted by the simplicity and good faith with which our children set about their undertaking? May he not have spent an hour of his immortality in playing with those dear little souls?”—Hawthorne.
“Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but—live for it.”—Colton.
Rule II. Concluding Clause.—When several expressions follow each other in succession, having a common dependence on the concluding part of the sentence, a dash is frequently placed before the clause on which they depend.
EXAMPLES.
“If you think it a crime in this writer that his language has not been braided and festooned as elegantly as it might be; that he has not pinched the miserable plaits of his phraseology, nor placed his patches and feathers with that correctness of millinery which became him,—then find a civil and obliging verdict against the printer!”—Curran.
“To foster industry, to promote union, to cherish religious peace,—these were the honest purposes of Lord Baltimore during his long supremacy.”—Bancroft.
REMARKS.
1. A dash is sometimes used to give prominence or emphasis to an emphatic conclusion; as, “Fortune, friends, kindred, home,—all were gone.”—Prescott.