of such people. From nervousness, and other causes
which I have not been able to trace, girls are apt to pitch their voices
too high, as though they thought to be better able to speak distinctly. A
gruff, mannish voice is worse than a piping, shrill tone in a woman; but
fulness of tone prevents no melody, and this comes from a medium
pitch. In the very modulations of the voice are detected excellence and
refinement. The human voice, in its sounds and accents, is a record of
character: trust it as the key-board of the human being.
May I remind you here, girls, of the harm arising from loud talk in
public places? How many times do we suffer annoyance from the noisy
voice in the car, the station, or on the street! How bold and immodest
such tones are! Some persons seem to think the public is not to be
regarded, and that it has no right to criticism. They appear to believe
that a train is no different than an open field, where the voice needs no
restraint, and where manners are not the most refined. They treat the
passengers with as little care as they do the cars; for, while they make a
waste-basket of the latter, they regard the former as so many brazen
images to be stared at ad libitum. Passengers have ears, though they
themselves be removed from the talkers by the distance of a seat or
two.
Now about the words you use, girls. I fully realize the expressiveness
of slang and the convenience of exaggeration. But if a peach pie is
almost "divine," and the Hudson River "awfully lovely," what can be
said of the New Testament and Niagara Falls? What is to become of the
poor innocent words in the English language which mean only
delicious and beautiful? By a girl's words know her; but, oh! never by
the slang she uses. This use of slang is really a serious matter. Honest
words are so misconstrued, and propriety in the employment of them so
injured,--phrases are capable of so many interpretations,--that even
serious people use slang in a very pathetic way without ever knowing
the words are slang. Girls not only hurt themselves, but go to work to
defame the very English language and the people who speak English.
When a young woman, who makes much pretension to fine manners
and an elegant education, takes the steam-car for a rostrum, and
exclaims about her French teacher as "awfully funny but awfully horrid,
don't you know; awfully lovely sometimes, but awfully awful at
others!" we wonder why she gives so much attention to French when
her English vocabulary seems to have reduced itself to the scanty
proportions of one word. Oh, I know how pertinent certain kinds of
slang are! I acknowledge that a few peculiar expressions convey ideas
more emphatically than whole pages of classical English.
The dangers from the habitual use of slang cannot be too strongly
presented. Imagine a girl of the period versed in the loose expressions
of the day. She goes away; but, after an absence of five years in a
country where she hears little except in a foreign tongue, she returns,
and with her comes her slang. How common, how witless, her talk
appears! Her slang has long since gone out of fashion. The best of
English never changes its style.
Girls, especially very young girls, must have their secret signs, their
language of nods and becks and shrugs; but young ladies who have
outgrown "eni, meni, moni, mi; husca, lina, bona, stri," ought to
outgrow signs which are suggestive of coarse, rude acts, and which,
with the slang expressions that accompany them, have often originated
in some theatre of questionable character.
The responsibility rests with you, girls, to stop this increasing use of
slang, and of words of double meaning. I say you can prevent it
because you are so much regarded. Your influence is wide, wider than
you suppose. If you do not cease speaking slang, your younger sisters
will not, your friends and acquaintances may not. More than this: if you
use coarse words, or those which may be interpreted in various ways,
then coarse manners will soon follow coarse tones, and a general
swaggering and lawlessness. My dear girls, I am only prophesying
what will be if no prevention is employed. Surely you will give no
cause for censure, if you seriously think about this matter.
It is a part of youthful exuberance to exaggerate. Children always want
a thing as long as "from here to Jerusalem," and stretch their tiny arms
out till they nearly fall backwards, trying to make an inch as long as a
mile. But, _cave canem_! the fault of exaggerating once powerful over
you, not only the
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