Many ladies are quite expert with the oars, and boating, when not overdone, is a healthful and pleasant amusement. When gentlemen are with a party of ladies, one of them should step in the boat to steady it, while another “assists” the ladies in. See that their dress is so arranged that they will not get wet. Inexperienced rowers should learn before joining a party.
The stroke oar is the seat of honor. It may be offered to a guest. Ladies should wear short dresses, free from encumbering draperies, heavy shoes, and a hat with a broad brim. Heavy gloves, if they intend rowing, should be worn.
Yachting is a delightful and rather dangerous amusement. Ladies wear warm wool dresses that water will not injure, made short in the skirt, and jaunty of cut, with sailor-like emblems for adornment. No young lady should go out alone with a gentleman either yachting or rowing. In yachting especially a boat is sometimes becalmed for hours and even all night. A party composed entirely of young people should have a chaperon.
Children’s Parties.
The celebration of children’s birthdays and other little anniversaries by means of parties, is a pleasant custom and one worthy of observance. Such red-letter days are long remembered by the little ones.
The invitations are issued in the children’s own names, and may be written or engraved. Usually they are written upon small note sheets and enclosed in small envelopes. If the invitation is for a Christmas-tree, or an Easter-egg hunt, a tiny tree, or a colored egg, may ornament one corner of the sheet.
The form varies hardly at all: Miss Gertrude Hall requests the pleasure of Miss Clara Winship’s company, on Wednesday, June twentieth. From three until five o’clock. 3 Madison Avenue.
These invitations should be carefully and promptly answered in the same form as given and in the third person. (See “Invitations,” etc.)
This teaches the little host or hostess the gravity of their position as entertainers, and impresses the little guests with the importance of their behavior. Also giving them an early lesson in the etiquette of social life.
If it is a birthday party, a birthday cake will be the chief feature, and it is a pretty fancy to have it decorated with as many tiny wax candles as there are years in the child’s life in whose honor the party is given. These tapers may be placed around the cake, or put in tin tubes and sunk into the top of the cake. Light them just before the little guests are called out to the table.