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.