Gilded Age Vocal Etiquette

There is no one thing that love so much needs as a sweet voice to tell what it means and feels, and it is hard to get it and keep it in the right tone. 

Cultivate a Sweet Voice

There is no power of love so hard to get and keep as a kind voice. A kind hand is deaf and dumb. It may be rough in flesh and blood, yet do the work of a soft heart, and do it with a kind touch. But there is no one thing that love so much needs as a sweet voice to tell what it means and feels, and it is hard to get it and keep it in the right tone. One must start in youth, and be on the watch night and day, at work and play, to get and keep a voice that shall speak at all times the thought of a kind heart, but this is the time when a sharp voice is apt to be got. You often hear boys and girls say words at play with a quick, sharp tone, as if it were the snap of a whip. When one of them gets vexed you will hear a voice that sounds as if it were made up of a snarl, a whine and a bark. 

Such a voice often speaks worse than the heart feels. It shows more ill-will in the tone than in the words. It is often in mirth that one gets a voice of a tone that is short, and sticks to him through life, and stirs up ill-will and grief, and falls like a drop of gull on the sweet joys at home. Such as these get a sharp home voice for use and keep their best voice for those they meet elsewhere, just as they would save their best cakes and pies for guests and all their sour food for their own board. I would say to all boys aim girls, “Use your guest voice at home.” Watch it by day as a pearl of great price, for it will be worth more to you in the days to come than the best pearl hid in the sea. A kind voice is a lark’s song to a hearth and home. It is to the heart what light is to the eye. —Humboldt Times, 1884

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