f
care should be exercised in so doing, lest inadvertently we force upon
another what may prove an undesirable acquaintance.

Introductions are given in cases of necessity, such as business
transactions, or emergencies that may arise in traveling, as when we
wish to consign some friend to the care of another. They are given at
balls, that partners may be found for all the dancers. Here, however,
care must be taken beforehand to ascertain if the parties will dance,
for such is the selfishness and, shall it be said, ill-breeding of our
society young men that not unfrequently they will walk away without
even offering the lady the courtesy of the next dance. In this way her
hostess unwittingly exposes her to a marked slight, since the
ball-room introduction is supposed to mean an intention on the part of
the gentleman to show some attention to the lady, with whom he should
either dance, promenade, or talk through one set.

Neither are young ladies quite guiltless in this respect, since it
often happens that they refuse partners from simple caprice, and no
gentleman likes to be refused, even for a quadrille. It may be added
that these introductions necessitate no after acknowledgments on
either side unless mutually agreeable.

Introductions are given at card parties when necessary to fill out
tables for a game and they occur also where one person especially
wishes another to become acquainted with a friend.

An English Custom.

Strangers are always introduced to visitors, and at dinners, if
previously unacquainted, the gentleman is introduced, a few minutes
beforehand, to the lady he is to take out to the table. In England,
however, where they exercise great care in giving introductions, even
this formality is not always complied with. Richard Grant White speaks
of being informed at the last moment, in some house whose owner
boasted many titles, that he was to take down "the lady in pink over
there in the bay window," to whom, therefore, he duly went, and,
bending an inviting elbow, said in his most persuasive tones: "May I
have the pleasure?" The proffered honor was accepted, and he and the
lady, each equally ignorant as to the other's identity, went out to
spend a long two hours in entertaining one another.

The one redeeming feature of this English custom is that everyone, at
private entertainments, talks to everyone else without an
introduction, considering that the fact of them being guests under the
same roof