d 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.

DOES REFINEMENT KILL INDIVIDUALITY?

Is it true that cultivation, what we call refinement, kills
individuality? Or, worse than that even, that one loses his taste by
over-cultivation? Those persons are uninteresting, certainly, who have
gone so far in culture that they accept conventional standards supposed
to be correct, to which they refer everything, and by which they measure
everybody. Taste usually implies a sort of selection; the cultivated
taste of which we speak is merely a comparison, no longer an individual
preference or appreciation, but only a reference to the conventional and
accepted standard. When a man or woman has reached this stage of
propriety we are never curious any more concerning their opinions on any
subject. We know that the opinions expressed will not be theirs, evolved
out of their own feeling, but that they will be the cut-and-dried results
of conventionality.

It is doubtless a great comfort to a person to know exactly how to feel
and what to say in every new contingency, but whether the zest of life is
not dulled by this ability is a grave question, for it leaves no room for
surprise and little for emotion. O ye belles of Newport and of Bar
Harbor, in your correct and conventional agreement of what is proper and
agreeable, are you wasting your sweet lives by rule? Is your compact,
graceful, orderly society liable to be monotonous in its gay repetition
of the same thing week after week? Is there nothing outside of that
envied circle which you make so brilliant? Is the Atlantic shore the only
coast where beauty may lounge and spread its net of enchantment? The
Atlantic shore and Europe? Perhaps on the Pacific you might come back to
your original selves, and find again that freedom and that charm of
individuality tha