NEW YORK FLIRTING PARTIES.

Evening Star, Issue 4222, 7 September 1876, Page 4

NEW YORK FLIRTING PARTIES.

{Queen.) | New York does not afford the samfe aspect of a marriage fair as does a London. season; it is a refinement of aristocratic civilisation that has not yet entirely pervaded the country, that the sole aim and object, the raison d’etre of a girl’s existence, is to make a great match, to which end she must train every word and look. But, then, these things come by nature to a certain extent. Marriage is an inevitable law, and its preliminaries, though enacted under ■■tdifferent systems, are apt to assimilate all themselves. The most seductive of entertainments, the dinner m i , petite comiie,,. is the chief Lenten penance'here, and it is managed as well as .. .tact wid arrangement can suggest. It is not on the usual plan., of asking a certain number of people to whom ifivitations are owing, and then endeavoring to pair them as well as possible ; it is,matter of mutual 'arrangement, and the real object of all entertainment is cayefulljr followed out, of giving as much as possible tp guests’. Premising that there are such things in New York as mothers who object to their daughters going out without them, yet the following plan is very . general:—A lady, probably a yonng married one, asks three or four girls if they will dine on a certain night; that ; settled, the next question is what men they would respectively like? when that momentous question is answered, the said men are straightway invited. Tho young ladies come with their maids, but without their mothers; • they go into dinner with the respective man whom they themselves virtually have invited, and when dinner is over they scatter in tete a-tetes on sofas or or contiguous chairs, each couple somehow or other managing to get a considerable distance from every other couple. Of course rooms en suite, bay windows curtained and commodious, conservatories with playing fountains and luxuriant foliage, do , not conflict with this object; but, on "the whole, conduce to the peculiar delectation of the evening. Now and tfien an abortive attempt at general amusement in the way of music or a game is made, only to meet at once with the failure it deserves. The hostess chaperons the party ; that is to say, she throws into the little plan any man she likes, takes him in to dinner, and flirts with him the rest of the evening. Of course this is all very nice, charming, delightful; and, as a i natural consequence, while in England nine girls out of ten will call a dinner ia horrible bore, all young people here, girls and men, enjoy it beyond all things.