I am fond of telling the story of the words which a distinguished friend of mine used in accepting a hard post of duty. He said:--"I do not think I am fit for this place. But my friends say I am, and I trust them. I shall take the place, and, when I am in it, I shall do as well as I can."
It is a very grand sentence. Observe that it has not one word which is more than one syllable. As it happens, also, every word is Saxon,--there is not one spurt of Latin. Yet this was a learned man, who, if he chose, could have said the whole in Latin. But he was one American gentleman talking to another American gentleman, and therefore he chose to use the tongue to which they both were born.
We have not space to go into the theory of these rules, as far as I should like to. But you see the force which a short word has, if you can use it, instead of a long one. If you want to say "hush," "hush" is a much better word than the French "taisez-vous" If you want to say "halt," "halt" is much better than the French "arretez-vous" The French have, in fact, borrowed "halte" from us or from the German, for their tactics. For the same reason, you want to prune out the unnecessary words from your sentences, and even the classes of words which seem put in to fill up. If, for instance, you can express your idea without an adjective, your sentence is stronger and more manly. It is better to say "a saint" than "a saintly man." It is better to say "This is the truth" than "This is the truthful result." Of course an adjective may be absolutely necessary. But you may often detect extempore speakers in piling in adjectives, because they have not yet hit on the right noun. In writing, this is not to be excused. "You have all the time there is," when you write, and you do better to sink a minute in thinking for one right word, than to put in two in its place,--because you can do so without loss of time. I hope every school-girl knows, what I am sure every school-boy knows, Sheridan's saying, that "Easy writing, is hard reading." In general, as I said before, other things being equal,
"The Fewer Words, The Better,"
"as it seems to me." "As it seems to me" is the quiet way in which Nestor states things. Would we were all as careful!
There is one adverb or adjective which it is almost always safe to leave out in America. It is the word "very." I learned that from one of the masters of English style. "Strike out your 'verys,'" said he to me, when I was young. I wish I had done so oftener than I have.
For myself, I like short sentences. This is, perhaps, because I have read a good deal of modern French, and I think the French gain in clearness by the shortness of their sentences. But there are great masters of style,--great enough to handle long sentences well,--and these men would not agree with me. But I will tell you this, that if you have a sentence which you do not like, the best experiment to try on it is the experiment Medea tried on the old goat, when she wanted to make him over:--
Cut It To Pieces.
What shall I take for illustration? You will be more interested in one of these school-girls' themes than in an old Congress speech I have here marked for copying. Here is the first draft of Laura Walter's composition, which happens to be tied up in the same red ribbon with the finished exercises. I will copy a piece of that, and then you shall see, from the corrected "composition," what came of it, when she cut it to pieces, and applied the other rules which we have been studying.
LAURA'S FIRST DRAFT.