TO DANCE AND YET BE PRUDENT.

Evening Star, Issue 3435, 24 February 1874, Page 3

TO DANCE AND YET BE PRUDENT.

(From London Society.) Be very careful not to pull down your shirt-sleeves, or up your collar, or, in fact, to do anything to your costume as you enter the ball-room. It implies nervousness or uneasiness with yourself to do so ; and your one great endeavor in all socities should be to appear thoroughly at your ease, and satisfied, without vanity or coxcombry, with your dress or appearance. Do not stand idle ; bnt do not dance overmuch. The one implies a small number of friends, the other wastes valuable time and prevents your keeping that constant look • out all around you’ which is essential to success. ' Be introduced to knowable people quietly ; there is no necessity to advertise to bystanders that you did not know them before. Never talk much to a woman you have only just the acquaintance of, nor eagerly. She may be allowed to suppose you wish to know her, but not that her acquaintance is any particular acquisition to you. Above all things, my dear boy, I entreat you not to stand in the doorways and herd with rtber men upon the landing. It is simply advertising yourself a failure. Tie yourself to the veriest wallflower gossip with the dowdiest mother, dance with the most disappointed of the maidenhood, rather than sink to this. Sitting in corners comprises a very large subject, or, rather, array of subjects. To know how to sit in corners well and prndently requires a vast experience and a steady head, so until you have much extended your acquaintance and your knowledge of humanity, I would recommend to you to'avoid that most agreeable thing of ball-going. It is not for a novice at once to penetrate to the inner depths of fashion’s mysteries, and 1 shall therefore pnt off my advice on that subject until I come, in a future letter, to the great subject of flirting, which, of course, comprises the art of sitting incomers.