“In my parish of Philadelphia there was a young woman brilliant as a spring morning. She gave her life to the world. She would come to religious meetings and under conviction would for a little while begin to pray, and then would rush off again into the discipleship of the world. She had all the world could offer of brilliant social position. One day a flushed and excited messenger asked me to hasten to her house for she was dying. I entered the room. There were the physicians, there was the mother, there lay this disciple of the world. I asked her some questions in regard to the soul. She made no answer. I knelt down to pray. I rose again, and desiring to get some expression in regard to her eternal interests, I said: ‘Have you any hope?’ and then for the first her lips moved in a whisper as she said: ‘No hope!’ Then she died. The world, she served it, and the world helped her not in the last.
“With many life is a masquerade ball, and as at such entertainments gentlemen and ladies put on the garb of kings and queens or mountebanks or clowns and at the close put off the disguise, so a great many pass their whole life in a mask, taking off the mask at death. While the masquerade ball of life goes on, they trip merrily over the floor, gemmed hand is stretched to gemmed hand, gleaming brow bends to gleaming brow. On with the dance! Flush and rustle and laughter of immeasurable merry-making. But after awhile the languor of death comes on the limbs and blurs the eye-sight. Lights lower. Floor hollow with sepulchral echo. Music saddened into a wail. Lights lower. Now the maskers are only seen in the dim light. Now the fragrance of the flowers is like the sickening odor that comes from garlands that have lain long in the vaults of cemeteries. Lights lower. Mists gather in the room. Glasses shake as though quaked by sullen thunder. Sigh caught in the curtain. Scarf drops from the shoulder of beauty a shroud. Lights lower. Over the slippery boards in dance of death glide jealousies, envies, revenges, lust, despair, and death. Stench of lamp-wicks almost extinguished. Torn garlands will not half cover the ulcerated feet. Choking damps. Chilliness. Feet still. Hands closed. Voices hushed. Eyes shut. Lights out.”
The dance must be classed with the wine-cup as the insidious enemy of a pure, upright, wholesome society. Pleasant and fascinating at first, it lures its victims to sacrifice after sacrifice until the end is reached. No man or woman was ever benefited morally, intellectually or physically by the dance; thousands and tens of thousands have found it their bane, and date their ruin from the first step they danced to the music across the floor of a lighted ball-room.
Wedding Etiquette.
Invitations.
Socially considered, marriage is the most important and imposing of all functions. It gives opportunity for the greatest display, the most elegant toilets, and the most lavish and superb manner of entertainment. Yet singularly enough, the etiquette of weddings is probably more variable and subject to innovation than that of any other event in the social calendar. At no two grand weddings is the etiquette precisely the same.
Wedding invitations according to present custom are consigned to the post from two to three weeks preceding the date of the event. Those sent to friends and relatives abroad are sent quite three weeks earlier. A representative invitation is given below:
Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Browne
request the honor of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter,
EVA MADGE,
to
MR. SAMUEL MARTIN HOPE,
on Wednesday, June the twenty-first,
at twelve o’clock, in
The Church of the Pilgrims.
This is engraved in round-hand script, without flourish and with little shading, and a tendency toward the medium and the small in size. The lines are rather close together, allowing considerable margin at top and bottom of the note. The paper most preferred has a white dull kid and parchment finish, in size between octavo and billet. When folded it fits an envelope that is almost square and which offers a choice of either a pointed or square flap. In town the pointed flap is considered the proper thing while the country favors the square one. The envelope inclosing the note is without gum and of the same weight as the inclosure, while the outer one, intended as a carrier only, is of lighter quality and gummed for sealing.
Wedding invitations require no answer. But people living at a distance, who cannot attend the wedding, should send their cards by mail, to assure the hosts that the invitation has been received.