I have just been talking to a girl with a shrill monotonous voice and an
abrupt way of moving. She is fresh from school, where they have taught
her history and geography 'whereby a soul can be discerned,' but what is
the value of an education, or even in the long run of a science, that
does not begin with the personality, the habitual self, and illustrate
all by that? Somebody should have taught her to speak for the most part
on whatever note of her voice is most musical, and soften those harsh
notes by speaking, not singing, to some stringed instrument, taking note
after note and, as it were, caressing her words a little as if she loved
the sound of them, and have taught her after this some beautiful
pantomimic dance, till it had grown a habit to live for eye and ear. A
wise theatre might make a training in strong and beautiful life the
fashion, teaching before all else the heroic discipline of the
looking-glass, for is not beauty, even as lasting love, one of the most
difficult of the arts?