THE UNBIDDEN GUEST.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 445, 6 March 1912, Page 7

THE UNBIDDEN GUEST.

A rumour that must be very uncomfortable to Loudon hostesses has cropped up again during the past tew weeks. It is to the effect that people are known to attend large balls and other private entertainments without having received invitations. In the case of members of the male sex, so long as those who come be have with decorum and are properly dressed, it seems to me practicallj impossible to discover who has 01 has not been sent a card of invitation. From force of circumstances any hostess giving a hall is obliged tc ask about four times as many, ir.ci as she expects to get, and it if quite out of the question that ever the most quickwitted hostess should remember all the six hundred or st male invitations she has issued. Be sides which, at a ball given, as s< many are nowadays, in a put lit hotel), it is quite possible to go di rect to the ballroom or to the res taurant where supper is served without even going through the formality of shaking hands with one's hostess What makes this idea of having n< check on stray comers especially dis agreeable is that one often hears oi valuable pieces of jewellery being lost at evening entertainments a nc never heard of again. Not long ago at a ball a young lady saw a male guest put a valu able brooch that had been picked up into his waistcoat pocket. She die not know the man, but she did hap pen to hear who was the owner o the brooch. But it was never res tored either to the loser or to tin Maitre d'Hotel of the rooms when the ball was held, nor was there a nj response to the urgent appeals thai appeared in the agony column o several newspapers, begging for thi Drooch to be returned, as it was specially valued.—The "Gentlewoman."