quality.  The Charleston St. Cecilia Society, organized in 1737, gave numerous amateurs opportunities to hear and perform the best musical compositions of the day, and its annual concerts, continued until 1822, were scarcely ever equalled elsewhere in America, during the same period.  In the aristocratic circles formal balls were frequent, and were exceedingly brilliant affairs.  Eliza Pinckney, describing one in 1742, says:  “...The Govr gave the Gentn a very gentile entertainment at noon, and a ball at night for the ladies on the Kings birthnight, at wch was a Crowded Audience of Gentn and ladies.  I danced a minuet with yr old acquaintance Capt Brodrick who was extreamly glad to see one so nearly releated to his old friend...."[160] Ravenel in her Eliza Pinckney reconstructs from her notes a picture of one of those dignified balls or fetes in the olden days: 

“On such an occasion as that referred to, a reception for the young bride who had just come from her own stately home of Ashley Hall, a few miles down the river, the guests naturally wore all their braveries.  Their dresses, brocade, taffety, lute-string, etc., were well drawn up through their pocket holes.  Their slippers, to match their dresses, had heels even higher and more unnatural than our own....  With bows and courtesies, and by the tips of their fingers, the ladies were led up the high stone steps to the wide hall, ... and then up the stair case with its heavy carved balustrade to the panelled rooms above....  Then, the last touches put to the heads (too loftily piled with cushions, puffs, curls, and lappets, to admit of being covered with anything more than a veil or a hood)....  Gay would be the feast....”

“The old silver, damask and India china still remaining show how these feasts were set out....  Miss Lucas has already told us something of what the country could furnish in the way of good cheer, and we may be sure that venison and turkey from the forest, ducks from the rice fields, and fish from the river at their doors, were there....  Turtle came from the West Indies, with ‘saffron and negroe pepper, very delicate for dressing it.’  Rice and vegetables were in plenty—­terrapins in every pond, and Carolina hams proverbially fine.  The desserts were custards and creams (at a wedding always bride cake and floating island), jellies, syllabubs, puddings and pastries....  They had port and claret too ... and for suppers a delicious punch called ‘shrub,’ compounded of rum, pineapples, lemons, etc., not to be commended by a temperance society.”

“The dinner over, the ladies withdrew, and before very long the scraping of the fiddlers would call the gentlemen to the dance,—­pretty, graceful dances, the minuet, stately and gracious, which opened the ball; and the country dance, fore-runner of our Virginia reel, in which every one old, and young joined."[161]

It is little wonder that Eliza Pinckney, upon returning from just such a social function to take up once more the heavy routine of managing three plantations, complained:  “At my return thither every thing appeared gloomy and lonesome, I began to consider what attraction there was in this place that used so agreeably to soothe my pensive humor, and made me indifferent to everything the gay world could boast; but I found the change not in the place but in myself."[162]