With fifty members, each might perhaps be allowed, besides her own ticket, two ladies’ invitations and four gentlemen’s.  That would make three hundred and fifty invitations available altogether.  The founders can of course decide on whatever number they choose.  Patronesses can also exchange tickets.  One who might want to ask a double number of guests to the “First Assembly” can arrange with another to exchange her “Second Assembly” invitations for “First” ones.  Also it often happens that the entire list sent in by a member has already been included, and not wanting to use her tickets, she gives them to another member who may have a debutante daughter and therefore be in need of extra ones.

Bachelor Balls (like the “Monday Germans” of Baltimore) are run by the gentlemen instead of the ladies.  Otherwise they are the same as the Assemblies.

Other Forms of Subscription Dances

Other forms are somewhat different in that instead of dividing the expenses between members who jointly issue invitations to few or many guests, the committee of ten, we will say, invites either all the men who are supposed to be eligible or all the young girls, to subscribe to a certain number of tickets.

For instance, dances known usually as Junior Assemblies or the Holiday Dances are organized by a group of ladies—­the mothers, usually, of debutantes.  The members of the organization are elected just as the others are, for life.  But they are apt after a few years, when their daughters are “too old,” to resign in favor of others whose daughters are beginning to be grown.  The debutantes of highest social position are invited to become members.  Each one pays “dues” and has the privilege of asking two men to each dance.  Mothers are not expected to go to these dances unless they are themselves patronesses.  Sometimes young women go to these dances until they marry; often they are for debutantes, but most often they are for girls the year before they “come out,” and for boys who are in college.

Patronesses Receive

At a subscription dance where patronesses take the place of a hostess, about four of these ladies are especially selected by the ball committee to receive.  They always stand in line and bow to each person who is announced, but do not shake hands.  The guest arriving also bows to the hostesses collectively (not four times).  A lady, for instance, is announced:  she takes a few steps toward the “receiving line” and makes a slight courtesy; the ladies receiving make a courtesy in unison, and the guest passes on.  A gentleman bows ceremoniously, the way he was taught in dancing school, and the ladies receiving incline their heads.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE DEBUTANTE

=HOW A YOUNG GIRL IS PRESENTED TO SOCIETY=