An experiment.

Listen to this:

While you read this:

“What is your address?” he began again, fixing his pencil towrite.

She looked at his hand.

“Carrie Meeber,” she said slowly. “Three hundred and fifty-fourWest Van Buren Street, care S. C. Hanson.”

He wrote it carefully down and got out the purse again. “You’llbe at home if I come around Monday night?” he said.

“I think so,” she answered.

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. Here were these two, bandying little phrases, drawing purses, looking at cards,and both unconscious of how inarticulate all their real feelings were. Neither was wise enough to be sure of the working of the mind of the other. He could not tell how his luring succeeded.She could not realise that she was drifting, until he secured her address. Now she felt that she had yielded something—he, that he had gained a victory. Already they felt that they were somehow associated. Already he took control in directing the conversation. His words were easy. Her manner was relaxed.

They were nearing Chicago. Signs were everywhere numerous.Trains flashed by them. Across wide stretches of flat, open prairie they could see lines of telegraph poles stalking across the fields toward the great city. Far away were indications of suburban towns, some big smokestacks towering high in the air.

from Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie

Well? Anything?

(Source: xroads.virginia.edu)