“If he can’t go, neither can we,” wrote one hundred members of his family. This was too much for the managers again, and they meekly consented to let him enter.
When a girl who has not been able to go, no matter how charming and attractive she is, marries a subscriber, the one comment that sweeps over the church is: “Well, she can go to the Assemblies now.”
One mother, who all of her life had been ruled by this social law, wept when her daughter told her that she was going to marry a man out of the list. The girl was a healthy, straightforward, American type, who did everything athletic and copied the field and turf when she talked. The man she was to marry had every desirable quality, except his name on the Golden Book.
“You will break my heart by such a marriage,” wailed the mother; “the first of all our family to be denied the Assemblies. You must give this man up.”
“Give up a bully man for a stupid ball? Well, I guess not,” was the final answer of the frank daughter. And she married the man.
One of the momentous questions that cost the managers sleepless nights was a question of ancestors, caused by two débutantes. They were children of a couple who had married the second time. One, the wife’s daughter, was by a former husband, who didn’t belong to the Assemblies. The other was a daughter of the husband by a first wife, both of whom belonged to the Assemblies. The girls had been brought up together from childhood, and when they came out in society, the father asked for their invitations together. This precipitated one of the most momentous emergencies that the managers ever had to meet. This exact question had never come before the Assembly. All kinds of advice, social and legal, were asked, and the question convulsed society. Everyone debated it, and everyone took sides. After many meetings by the managers, the decision was reached that the stepdaughter of the father couldn’t be invited, but that the stepdaughter of the mother could.
And such a hold have the rules of the Assembly on Philadelphians, that nothing about this was considered unusual. Had it been a question of admittance by descent into the House of Peers, it couldn’t have been more important.
But if it were not for the peculiarity of these rules and customs which govern the two oldest balls in the world, it is doubtful if they would have become famous, or if they would have preserved, through the centuries, their unique charm, their peculiar social aroma.
We are a restless, easily wearied, ever-changing people. It is delightful to know that in the hurly-burly these two social affairs live out the traditions of our ancestors.
May they always copy their manners!