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?