W. J. ROLFE, A.M.
The inscription on the Soldiers' Monument in Boston, written by the President of Harvard College, has been much admired. It reads thus:
TO THE MEN OF BOSTON
WHO DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY
ON LAND AND SEA IN THE WAR
WHICH KEPT THE UNION WHOLE
DESTROYED SLAVERY
AND MAINTAINED THE CONSTITUTION
THE GRATEFUL CITY
HAS BUILT THIS MONUMENT
THAT THEIR EXAMPLE MAY SPEAK
TO COMING GENERATIONS
What is to be said is here said in the simplest way. There is no waste of words, no attempt at display. It is a model of good English, brief, clear, and strong. If a school-boy had written it, he would have thought it a fine chance for using big words. He would have said, "The citizens of Boston who sacrificed their lives," not "the men who died"; and "preserved the integrity of the Union," not "kept the Union whole"; and "erected," not "built." And some men who have written much in newspapers and books would have made the same mistake of choosing long words where short ones give the sense as well or better.
A great preacher once said that he made it a rule never to use a word of three or two syllables when a word of two syllables or one syllable would convey the thought as well; and the rule is a good one. In reading we want to get at the sense through the words; and the less power the mind has to spend on the words, the more it has left for the thought that lies behind them. Here the simple words that we have known and used from childhood are the ones that hinder us least. We see through them at once, and the thought is ours with the least possible labor.
Those who urge the use of simple English often lay stress on choosing "Saxon" rather than "Classical" words, and it is well to know what this means.
The English is a mixed language, made up from various sources. Its history is the history of the English race, and the main facts are these:
Britain was first peopled, so far as we know, by men of the Celtic (or Keltic) race, of which the native Irish are types. The names of the rivers, mountains, and other natural features of the land are mostly Celtic, just as in this country they are mostly Indian. About fifty years before the Christian era the Romans conquered Britain, and held it for about 500 years. They brought in the Latin language; but few traces of it now remain except in the names of certain towns and cities. The mass of the people kept their old Celtic tongue. Between the years 450 and 550 a.d. Britain was invaded and conquered by German tribes, chiefly Angles and Saxons. It now became Angleland, or England; and the language became what is called Anglo-Saxon, except in the mountains of Wales and of Scotland, where Celtic is found to this day. In the ninth and tenth centuries the Danes invaded England, and ruled it for a time, but they caused no great change in the language. In the year 1066 the Norman Conquest took place, and William the Conqueror became King of England. Large numbers of the Norman French came with him, and French became the language of the court and of the nobility. By degrees our English language grew out of the blending of the Anglo-Saxon of the common people and the Norman French of their new rulers, the former furnishing most of the grammar, the latter supplying many of the words. Now the French was of Latin origin, and the English thus got an important Latin or "Classical" element, which has since been increased by the adding of many Greek and Latin words, especially scientific and technical terms.
The two great events in the history of the English language, as of the English people, are the Saxon and the Norman conquests. To the former it owes its grammatical frame-work, or skeleton; to the latter much of its vocabulary, or the flesh that fills out the living body.
It must not be inferred that our grammar is just like the Anglo-Saxon because this is the basis of it. The Anglo-Saxon had many more inflections (case-endings of nouns and pronouns, etc.) than the French, and in the forming of English most of these were dropped, prepositions and auxiliaries coming to be used instead. It was not until about a.d. 1550 that the language had become in the main what it now is. Some words have since been lost, and many have been added, but its grammar has changed very little. Our version of the Bible, published in 1611, shows what English then was (and had been for fifty years or more), and has done much to keep it from further change.
As a rule the most common words—those that chiefly make up the language of childhood and of every-day life—are Saxon; and very many of them are words of one syllable. In the inscription above, every monosyllable is Saxon, with Boston, grateful, and coming; the rest are French or Latin. In the case of pairs of words having the same meaning, one is likely to be Saxon, the other Classical. Thus happiness is Saxon, felicity is French; begin is Saxon, commence is French; freedom is Saxon, liberty is French, etc. The Saxon is often to be preferred, though not always; but, as has been implied above, if a short and simple word conveys our meaning, we should never put it aside for a longer and less familiar one. In such cases the chances are that the former is Saxon, and the latter Classical. Thus above, citizens, sacrificed, preserved, integrity, and erected are all Classical.
THE STORY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON.
BY EDWARD C. CARY.
Chapter III.
Washington spent about nine months with the army around Boston. Several times he was ready to attack the British, and to try and drive them from the city; but his officers were afraid the army was not strong enough. So Washington had to wait and watch—he had a good deal of waiting and watching to do all through the war, for that matter. At last, in March, 1776, the Americans around Boston having gradually pushed closer and closer, the British found that they must either leave or fight. Their General did not feel strong enough to fight, so he put his men on ships and sailed away to Halifax. Of course the Americans were greatly rejoiced. Washington got much praise, and deserved it, for he had shown great good judgment and skill in his management of the army.
Washington knew that the British would soon come back, and thought they would come to New York. So he took nearly all his army, and marched them westward to that city.
Early in July the British came, as Washington had expected, and made their camp on the beautiful hillsides of Staten Island. They brought with them what they called propositions for peace. These were simply offers to pardon the Americans for resisting the British tax laws, if they would now obey them. But this would only have left things exactly as they were in the beginning; it came too late. The Americans had already made up their minds that they would not obey the British laws which taxed them, nor any laws of Great Britain, but that in the future they would make their own laws in such manner as seemed to them most just. This purpose was written out in a long paper called the Declaration of Independence, and was signed on the Fourth of July, 1776, by the members of Congress. General Washington caused the Declaration of Independence to be read to his soldiers. "Now," he said to them, "the peace and safety of our country depend, under God, solely on the success of our arms," and he appealed to "every officer and soldier to act with fidelity and courage."
The year 1776 was a very gloomy one. All efforts to hold New York failed. A hard battle was fought around Brooklyn (August 27), and the Americans were badly beaten. Washington had to give up New York, and content himself with trying to keep the British from going to Philadelphia. Late in the fall he got across the Delaware River, with the British close on his heels. Soon the river filled with ice, as the cold weather came on, and the two armies lay one on one side and the other on the other. The American troops had dwindled away until there were only about three thousand of them.
Washington resolved that something must be done to raise the spirits of the country, or the people would lose all hope of resisting the British with success. At Trenton, on the opposite side from his own army, lay a force of Hessians, who were German soldiers, hired by Great Britain to come to America to fight, and Washington formed the plan of capturing them.
On Christmas-eve, 1776, he crossed the Delaware with 2400 men. The night was bitterly cold; a pelting hail-storm was falling; ice in great blocks was running down the stream, and hindered the boats, so that the army did not get across until four o'clock in the morning. Then the soldiers formed in ranks in the darkness, and being divided into two parties, started for Trenton, nine miles below. Washington led one of the parties, and General Sullivan the other. As they plodded along through the hail and snow, some of the men, exhausted, fell by the road-side, and of these two froze to death before they could be rescued.
As the men under Washington reached Trenton, and began to capture the Hessian soldiers set as sentinels to watch the road, they heard firing on the other side of the town, and knew that Sullivan's men had come up. Then both parties rushed swiftly toward the centre of the town, and with very little bloodshed a thousand prisoners were taken. This was a great success of itself, and had the effect which Washington had hoped for: it gave the whole country new courage.
Washington then started back toward New York, and so rapid was his march that the British commander became frightened lest the Americans should retake the city, and he too went quickly back, and gave up all thought of reaching Philadelphia that year.