Complete Essays | Page 9

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, 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