As We Were Saying | Page 9

it could be demonstrated that they would
be more readily heard if they all spoke in low tones. But the object is
not conversation; it is the social exhilaration that comes from the wild
exercise of the voice in working off a nervous energy; it is so seldom
that in her own house a lady gets a chance to scream.
The dinner-party, where there are ten or twelve at table, is a favorite
chance for this exercise. At a recent dinner, where there were a dozen
uncommonly intelligent people, all capable of the most entertaining
conversation, by some chance, or owing to some nervous condition,
they all began to speak in a high voice as soon as they were seated, and
the effect was that of a dynamite explosion. It was a cheerful babel of
indistinguishable noise, so loud and shrill and continuous that it was
absolutely impossible for two people seated on the opposite sides of the
table, and both shouting at each other, to catch an intelligible sentence.
This made a lively dinner. Everybody was animated, and if there was
no conversation, even between persons seated side by side, there was a
glorious clatter and roar; and when it was over, everybody was hoarse
and exhausted, and conscious that he had done his best in a high social
function.
This topic is not the selection of the Drawer, the province of which is to
note, but not to criticise, the higher civilization. But the inquiry has
come from many cities, from many women, "Cannot something be
done to stop social screaming?" The question is referred to the
scientific branch of the Social Science Association. If it is a mere
fashion, the association can do nothing. But it might institute some
practical experiments. It might get together in a small room fifty people
all let loose in the ordinary screaming contest, measure the total volume
of noise and divide it by fifty, and ascertain how much throat power
was needed in one person to be audible to another three feet from the
latter's ear. This would sift out the persons fit for such a contest. The
investigator might then call a dead silence in the assembly, and request
each person to talk in a natural voice, then divide the total noise as
before, and see what chance of being heard an ordinary individual had
in it. If it turned out in these circumstances that every person present
could speak with ease and hear perfectly what was said, then the order
might be given for the talk to go on in that tone, and that every person

who raised the voice and began to scream should be gagged and
removed to another room. In this room could be collected all the
screamers to enjoy their own powers. The same experiment might be
tried at a dinner-party, namely, to ascertain if the total hum of low
voices in the natural key would not be less for the individual voice to
overcome than the total scream of all the voices raised to a shriek. If
scientific research demonstrated the feasibility of speaking in an
ordinary voice at receptions, dinner-parties, and in "calls," then the
Drawer is of opinion that intelligible and enjoyable conversation would
be possible on these occasions, if it becomes fashionable not to scream.

DOES REFINEMENT KILL INDIVIDUALITY?
Is it true that cultivation, what we call refinement, kills individuality?
Or, worse than that even, that one loses his taste by over-cultivation?
Those persons are uninteresting, certainly, who have gone so far in
culture that they accept conventional standards supposed to be correct,
to which they refer everything, and by which they measure everybody.
Taste usually implies a sort of selection; the cultivated taste of which
we speak is merely a comparison, no longer an individual preference or
appreciation, but only a reference to the conventional and accepted
standard. When a man or woman has reached this stage of propriety we
are never curious any more concerning their opinions on any subject.
We know that the opinions expressed will not be theirs, evolved out of
their own feeling, but that they will be the cut-and-dried results of
conventionality.
It is doubtless a great comfort to a person to know exactly how to feel
and what to say in every new contingency, but whether the zest of life
is not dulled by this ability is a grave question, for it leaves no room for
surprise and little for emotion. O ye belles of Newport and of Bar
Harbor, in your correct and conventional agreement of what is proper
and agreeable, are you wasting your sweet lives by rule? Is your
compact, graceful, orderly society liable to be monotonous in its gay
repetition of the same thing week after week? Is there nothing