As We Were Saying | Page 8

we are and the materials we have to work
on. And we must not leave the world so perfectly civilized that the
inhabitants, two or three centuries ahead, will have nothing to do.

SOCIAL SCREAMING
Of all the contrivances for amusement in this agreeable world the
"Reception" is the most ingenious, and would probably most excite the
wonder of an angel sent down to inspect our social life. If he should
pause at the entrance of the house where one is in progress, he would
be puzzled. The noise that would greet his ears is different from the
deep continuous roar in the streets, it is unlike the hum of millions of
seventeen-year locusts, it wants the musical quality of the spring
conventions of the blackbirds in the chestnuts, and he could not
compare it to the vociferation in a lunatic asylum, for that is really
subdued and infrequent. He might be incapable of analyzing this, but
when he caught sight of the company he would be compelled to
recognize it as the noise of our highest civilization. It may not be
perfect, for there are limits to human powers of endurance, but it is the
best we can do. It is not a chance affair. Here are selected, picked out
by special invitation, the best that society can show, the most intelligent,
the most accomplished, the most beautiful, the best dressed persons in
the community--all receptions have this character. The angel would
notice this at once, and he would be astonished at the number of such
persons, for the rooms would be so crowded that he would see the
hopelessness of attempting to edge or wedge his way through the
throng without tearing off his wings. An angel, in short, would stand no
chance in one of these brilliant assemblies on account of his wings, and
he probably could not be heard, on account of the low, heavenly pitch

of his voice. His inference would be that these people had been selected
to come together by reason of their superior power of screaming. He
would be wrong.
--They are selected on account of their intelligence, agreeableness, and
power of entertaining each other. They come together, not for exercise,
but pleasure, and the more they crowd and jam and struggle, and the
louder they scream, the greater the pleasure. It is a kind of contest, full
of good-humor and excitement. The one that has the shrillest voice and
can scream the loudest is most successful. It would seem at first that
they are under a singular hallucination, imagining that the more noise
there is in the room the better each one can be heard, and so each one
continues to raise his or her voice in order to drown the other voices.
The secret of the game is to pitch the voice one or two octaves above
the ordinary tone. Some throats cannot stand this strain long; they
become rasped and sore, and the voices break; but this adds to the
excitement and enjoyment of those who can scream with less
inconvenience. The angel would notice that if at any time silence was
called, in order that an announcement of music could be made, in the
awful hush that followed people spoke to each other in their natural
voices, and everybody could be heard without effort. But this was not
the object of the Reception, and in a moment more the screaming
would begin again, the voices growing higher and higher, until, if the
roof were taken off, one vast shriek would go up to heaven.
This is not only a fashion, it is an art. People have to train for it, and as
it is a unique amusement, it is worth some trouble to be able to succeed
in it. Men, by reason of their stolidity and deeper voices, can never be
proficients in it; and they do not have so much practice--unless they are
stock-brokers. Ladies keep themselves in training in their ordinary calls.
If three or four meet in a drawing-room they all begin to scream, not
that they may be heard--for the higher they go the less they understand
each other--but simply to acquire the art of screaming at receptions. If
half a dozen ladies meeting by chance in a parlor should converse
quietly in their sweet, ordinary home tones, it might be in a certain
sense agreeable, but it would not be fashionable, and it would not strike
the prevailing note of our civilization. If it were true that a group of
women all like to talk at the same time when they meet (which is a
slander invented by men, who may be just as loquacious, but not so

limber-tongued and quick-witted), and raise their voices to a shriek in
order to dominate each other,