Its so true. They had a delicious use of language that seemed to produce a sentence that contained so much detail in a somehow strange order or on multiple levels that added a certain poetry to even the most mundane of statements. 

I tried to read Moby Dick a couple of years ago but gave up as every sentence was so contorted and long winded that it was just exhausting and got very boring when the plot moved so slowly. I think there is a sweet spot here though for this kind of expression though, a middle ground.

 Maybe people spoke differently back then ? Probably not, but they must have had a good concentration and a certain intelligence to follow a story, and something I dont possess to finish it !