at 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. Ev