The Inauguration Ball in Washington, as well as the New Years' receptions at the different embassies' and secretaries' houses, are public functions to which the populace get admittance. They are crushes of the worst description, and at many of them refreshments are served. Except to make an obeisance to your distinguished host and hostess—if to the President, shaking hands with him—no other ceremony is needed.
At Newport and at other watering places there are during the season semipublic dances at the Casino. Any one who subscribes to that place of amusement is entitled to all the social privileges. The tickets can be obtained from the secretary or his agent.
In every city there is an assembly or dancing organization on the lines of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in New York. This is in itself not original with the "Four Hundred"—vulgar term!—but was copied from the St. Cecilia, the most exclusive affair of the kind in aristocratic Charleston, where it has existed since the days of the Revolution. The assemblies proper in New York are called the Matriarchs. The arrangements are in the hands of a number of fashionable women instead of men. The plan of all these organizations is practically the same. In order to make matters easy and to pilot my reader through the intricacies of a fashionable ball, I will suppose that he is a stranger in New York, with some smart friends, and that he is going either to the Patriarchs' or to the Assembly. The rules laid down will hold good for other cities. Your first intimation may be while visiting at the house of one of the patrons or patronesses, when your hostess or host may ask you if you would like to go to the Assembly or the Patriarchs'. If you have no other engagement for that evening—and I think it would be policy for you to make others subservient to this—you should reply that you would be delighted to do so. Your host or hostess will then say that he or she will send you a ticket. This may be one way, or you may receive a note asking if you are free for that particular date, whether "would you like to go to the Assembly?" etc., or again, you might simply receive a note with a ticket. In any one of these cases, just as soon as you receive the ticket you must answer your correspondent immediately, accepting, or, if you can not go, regretting and returning it. You must remember that all tickets are personal and each Patriarch or each patroness has only a certain number.
I would, if there were time between the date for the ball and the reception of your ticket, call or leave cards personally on your hostess or host for the evening, according to rules in a former chapter. I do not believe this is considered necessary in New York, and perhaps some people would think you were straining a point, but New York "society" manners to-day are not all that could be desired.
The evening arrives. Balls and dances are theoretically supposed to begin at ten o'clock. You can safely go a little after eleven. You will be early enough. Your ticket is received, your hat and coat removed, your hat check given, and you proceed to the ballroom.
It is almost needless for me to tell you how to dress for this occasion. At dances of any kind, formal evening dress is required.
On entering the room, if it is at the Assembly, you will encounter a line of patronesses. You should make a low, sweeping bow to them and, if convenient, speak to your hostess, be it only a few words of greeting. If not at that time, select a later hour in the evening. No one shakes hands.
You look around to find your friends and acquaintances. At the Patriarchs' the chaperons sit upon a raised platform, or dais, I might call it, all together. Their charges, once away from them, are around the rooms. In nearly all the cities, except New York, every guest is provided with a dancing card, which makes the keeping of dancing engagements a part of the festivity. New York is too large for such things, and dancing cards have been relegated to the realms of innocuous desuetude. However, if you are at a ball or a dance in another city where they are used, your first duty would be to have your engagements filled. You should remain with your partner after each dance until her next cavalier appears.
New Yorkers are sensible, if only for this reason, for having banished the dance card. It is hard for a man to tell a woman he must leave her, but I think it is better by far to do so than to appear rude to your succeeding partner. A woman who has so little regard for you and such selfish consideration for herself does not deserve to be handled with gloves. And yet it needs a heroic soul to abandon her in a crowded ballroom, even if it is to lead her back to her chaperon.
In New York everything is simplified. There exist no such social complications. Everybody is more or less grouped together, and you generally know in which part of the room you are to find your friends. You exchange greetings with the women you know, and if you wish to ask one of them to dance, you say, "May I have the pleasure of this turn with you?" or "Can I have a turn with you?" It is absolutely impossible to keep dance engagements, and you are obliged, perhaps, to snatch a dance whenever you can get it. After your turn you must always manage to stop at about the point where you began. You will be sure to find your partner's chaperon just at that place. There are two reasons for this—one is that the man with whom your partner has engaged weeks, if not months, before (one has to do this in New York) to dance the cotillon has reserved his chairs there, and she has told many of her friends just about in which part of the ballroom she may be found; and another is that New York women, under all circumstances, keep a distinctive place in a ballroom.