17. Ruskin says that in a kindly and well-bred society, if anybody tries to please them, they try to be pleased; if anybody tries to astonish them, they have the courtesy to be astonished; if people become tiresome, they ask somebody to sing or play: but they do not criticise.
18. Such a household as that of Zacharias and Elizabeth would have all that was beautiful in the religion of the time: devotion towards God; a home of affection and purity; reverence towards all that was sacred in things divine and human; ungrudging, self-denying, loving charity to the poor; the tenderest regard for the feelings of others, so as not to raise a blush, nor to wound their hearts; above all, intense faith and hope in the higher and better future of Israel.
19. I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me.
As the for relation is here unmistakable, it should be made so at a glance in the punctuation by the use of a comma before “for” or by a colon after “slept.”
20. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The above is the punctuation of the Common Version of Isaiah xi, 7. The American Revised Version uses a semicolon instead of the colon, thus making a series of the three groups of words. We think the latter poor punctuation, because the first and second groups form one picture, and the third group forms another. The two pictures are revealed by the use of the semicolon and the colon; and intelligently to read the verse aloud requires a shorter pause at the semicolon than at the colon. The two pictures are clearly indicated by “feeding” in one group, and “eating” in the other.
21. Virtue and wisdom are an up-hill road, where people do not advance without some effort; folly and vice, a down-hill path, where it requires some effort not to advance.
22. The custom of exchanging presents on a certain day in the year is a fine thing or a foolish thing, as the case may be; an encouragement to friendliness, or a tribute to fashion; an expression of good nature, or a bid for favor; an outgoing of generosity, or a guise of greed; a cheerful old custom, or a futile old farce, according to the spirit and the form which it takes.
This sentence, from a well-known writer, is poorly punctuated, and has another fault, which will be revealed by an effort to punctuate the group of words following “farce” so as to show to what it belongs.
The omission of a comma before the first “or” is proper; the use of one before each following “or” is unnecessary.