Mr. & Mrs. Robert Gilding

request the pleasure of

[Name of guest is written here]

company on Tuesday, the twenty-seventh of December

at ten o’clock

at the Fitz-Cherry

Dancing R.s.v.p. 
Twenty-three East Laurel Street

The hostess never leaves her post, wherever it is she is standing, until she goes to supper.  If, as at the Ritz in New York, the ballroom opens on a foyer at the head of a stairway, the hostess always receives at this place.  In a private house where guests go up in an elevator to the dressing rooms, and then walk down to the ballroom floor, the hostess receives either at the foot of the stairway, or just outside the ballroom.

=THE HOSTESS AT A BALL=

Guests arriving are announced, as at a dinner or afternoon tea, and after shaking hands with the hostess, they must pass on into the ballroom.  It is not etiquette to linger beside the hostess for more than a moment, especially if later arrivals are being announced.  A stranger ought never go to a ball alone, as the hostess is powerless to “look after” any especial guests; her duty being to stand in one precise place and receive.  A stranger who is a particular friend of the hostess would be looked after by the host; but a stranger who is invited through another guest should be looked after by that other.

A gentleman who has received an invitation through a friend is usually accompanied by the friend who presents him.  Otherwise when the butler announces him to the hostess, he bows, and says “Mrs. Norman asked you if I might come.”  And the hostess shakes hands and says “How do you do, I am very glad to see you.”  If other young men or any young girls are standing near, the hostess very likely introduces him.  Otherwise, if he knows no one, he waits among the stags until his own particular sponsor appears.

After supper, when she is no longer receiving, the hostess is free to talk with her friends and give her attention to the roomful of young people who are actually in her charge.

When her guests leave she does not go back to where she received, but stands wherever she happens to be, shakes hands and says “Good night.”  There is one occasion when it is better not to bid one’s hostess good night, and that is, if one finds her party dull and leaves again immediately; in this one case it is more polite to slip away so as to attract the least attention possible, but late in the evening it is inexcusably ill mannered not to find her and say “Good night” and “Thank you.”

The duty of seeing that guests are looked after, that shy youths are presented to partners, that shyer girls are not left on the far wall-flower outposts, that the dowagers are taken in to supper, and that the elderly gentlemen are provided with good cigars in the smoking-room, falls to the host and his son or son-in-law, or any other near male member of the family.