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, 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.