Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1882 — The Use of Short Words. [ARTICLE]

The Use of Short Words.

Ex-GoYCJPor Horatio Seymour. We must not only think in words, but we must also try- to use the best words, aud thoke which in speech will put what is in our minus into the minds of others. This is the great art which those must gain who wish to teach in the school, the church, at the bar, or through the press. To do this in the right way they should use the short words which we learn in early life, and which have the same sense to all classes of men. The English of our Bible is good. Now and then some long ufbrus are found, and they always hurt the verses in which you find them. Take that which says: “0 ye generation of vipers, who har.h warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” There is one loDg word which ought not to be iu it, namely, “generation.” In'the old version the <>id wonF'brood” is used. Read the verse again with this term, von feel its fuil force: “O ye viper’s brood, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Crime Sometimes does not look like crime When it is set before us in the many folds of a\ long word. When a man steals wev call it ‘defalcation,’ we are at loss to know if it is a blunder or a crime. If he does not tell the truth, and we are told! it is a case of ‘prevarication,’ it takes us some time to know just what we should think of it. No man will cheat himself in wrong doing, nor Will he be at loss to judge of others, if he thinks and speaks of acts in clear efisp terms. It is a good rule, if one is at losjs to know if an act is right or Wrong, to write it down in a short straightout English.