The Charm School
fit for life—to make its pupils happy, useful, well-developed people—in other words, to fit them not only for intellectual achievements, but for their human relations.
And here, with something of a bound, he passed on to the question of charm. What was charm? (The whole school sat up.) It was first of all an affair of the soul—of the very core of the being, but it was also an affair of expressing that soul outwardly, of voice, of manner, of bearing. Truths expressed in a rasping voice were at a disadvantage, and, judging by the sounds he heard as he came down the corridor, he feared a good many truths were put at that disadvantage by members of the school. Well, he simply did not intend his pupils to go through life with any such handicap as that, every time they opened their mouths. They needn't think he was going to have them taught elocution in the sense of wasting time repeating Anthony's speech—no indeed, it was every-day speech he was after—every-day life. He knew colleges that taught men to write splendid briefs about municipal ownership which did not trouble to teach them to write a decent note. That was the trouble with colleges. He did not mean his girls to fall into that error. While
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