Is
there any intellectual or physical pleasure equal to that of jamming so
many people into a house that they can hardly move, and treating them to
a Babel of noises in which no one can make herself heard without
screaming? There is nothing like a reception in any uncivilized country.
It is so exhilarating! When a dozen or a hundred people are gathered
together in a room, they all begin to raise their voices and to shout
like pool-sellers in the noble rivalry of "warious langwidges," rasping
their throats into bronchitis in the bidding of the conversational ring.
If they spoke low, or even in the ordinary tone, conversation would be
possible. But then it would not be a reception, as we understand it. We
cannot neglect anywhere any of the pleasures of our social life. We train
for it in lower assemblies. Half a dozen women in a "call" are obliged to
shout, just for practice, so that they can be heard by everybody in the
neighborhood except themselves. Do not men do the same? If they do, it
only shows that men also are capable of the higher civilization.
But does society--that is, the intercourse of congenial people--depend
upon the elaborate system of exchanging calls with hundreds of people who
are not congenial? Such thoughts will sometimes come by a winter fireside
of rational-talking friends, or at a dinner-party not too large for talk
without a telephone, or in the summer-time by the sea, or in the cottage
in the hills, when the fever of social life has got down to a normal
temperature.
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