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
a