I feel like people were more eloquent in older times. Look at these quotes from boys who fought in the US Civil War, unless they were enhanced by whoever recorded them:

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/children_civilwar/child_soldiers.cfm

>Day after day and night after night did we tramp along the rough and dusty roads ‘neath the most broiling sun with which the month of August ever afflicted a soldier; thro’ rivers and their rocky valleys, over mountains—on, on, scarcely stopping to gather the green corn from the fields to serve us for rations…. During these marches the men are sometimes unrecognizable on account of the thick coverings of dust which settle upon their hair, eye-brows and beard, filling likewise the mouth, nose, eyes, and ears.

-some random 16 year old confederate soldier