9. The examination embraces spelling, punctuation, the use of capital letters, grammar, arithmetic, geography (descriptive and physical), languages, etc.
10. If you will take my advice, you will throw that letter into the fire. (A bright one was blazing on the hearth.) If you keep it, it will probably tempt you into an outlay beyond your means.
11. His voice and manner,—the manner of the old Oxford scholar of the best type, and, alas! of a bygone generation, with its indescribable indication of cultured and lettered ease,—were singularly attractive.
12. Measure as we may the progress of the world,—materially, in the advantages of steam, electricity, and other mechanical appliances; sociologically, in the great improvements in the conditions of life; intellectually, in the diffusion of education; morally, in a possibly higher standard of ethics,—there is no one measure which can compare with the decrease of physical suffering in man, woman, and child when stricken by disease or accident.
The consideration of the use of the dash in No. 12 does not strictly fall in this chapter; and yet its position gives what follows it the appearance of an aside with grammatical connection (apposition) with what precedes. “As we may” is equivalent to “in any manner”; and the matter set off by dashes gives details of “in any manner,” or, more strictly, of “measure in any manner.”
Let us here note, parenthetically, that if “as we may” were [144]changed to “as we can,” these words would be set off by commas, being simply an explanatory group, and not a restrictive group, as they are now, being equivalent to “in whatever way.”
13. Shooting stars are only little masses of matter,—bits of rock or metal, or cloudlets of dust and gas,—which are flying unresisted through space, just as planets and comets do, in paths which, within the limits of our solar system, are controlled by the attraction of the sun.
Why not use marks of parentheses in No. 13, instead of dashes? The reason lies in the meaning of the former marks. If “matter” or “little masses of matter” were an obscure term requiring explanation, the explanatory term would properly take the form of a parenthesis; but we have here a mere apposition, used by way of example or illustration, as we might use the words apples and pears to explain what we mean by the word fruit in a sentence.
14. That child of so many prayers, who was to bear the significant name of John (Jehochanan, “the Lord is gracious”) was to be the source of joy and gladness to a far wider circle than that of the family.
15. Such scanty record was kept of Sebastian Cabot’s voyages of 1497 and 1498 that we cannot tell what land the Cabots first saw,—whether it was the bleak coast of Northern Labrador, or some point as far South as Cape Breton.