Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1874 — The Folly of Fashionable Balls. [ARTICLE]

The Folly of Fashionable Balls.

Mrs. GnuNDT has decreed that Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith, who have nothing whatever in common beyond the fact of belonging to the same social set, and who naturally either dislike each other exceedingly or are entirely indifferent to each other, shall exchange formal calls ad infinitum. Accordingly Mrs. Jones, with loudly-expressed regret at the necessity of foing, and hope that Mrs. Smith will be out, arrays herself elaborately and pulls the Smith door-bell. If Mrs. Smith is not at home, actually or figuratively, Mrs. Jones breathes a sigh of relief and hurries away. If she is, Mrs. Joues is ushered into a lugubrious parlor, where she wastes half an hour in idle gossip about the weather, and the last engagement, and the next party, and the wondrous achiastments of various common-place children. Each woman listens and talks languidly. Each is wishing the bore were over. When the necessary minutes have been consumed Mrs. Jones departs. When the necessary weeks have passed Mrs. Smith plays her part in this most tedious society drama, and the curtain falls to rise again a month or two later on Mrs. Jones. Both these women would stop this farcical exchange of visits if they dared. But they do not dare. It is the fashion and they follow it. As a result they are obliged to waste hours on hours, week after week, in a round of bowing and gossiping and smiling, from which they get no possi ble good; They either have to give up one whole day every week to receiving calls or they must hold themselves in readiness at almost every hour of every day to do so. It does not seem to occur to these people that where such system prevails nothing else systematic can. There can be no fixed hours for anything. Friends cannot exchange calls at will because acquaintances left in the lurch would be hurt. Sometimes a woman grows sufficiently independent to announce that she will not make ealls:Then the rest of her sex, every one of whom would be glad to imitate her, affect a proper horror,, and condemn as impolite, shocking, etc., her brave disregard of one of the most senseless observances of society. Five years afterward, the woman who dared usuallly knows something,'while her old associates are still displaying their old stock of information. Would it not be well for women reformers to remember that calling and dressing are two great grounds for reform'? They are alike in this, that women can, if they will, effect the reform in both by their single efforts. Masculine co-operation is hot needed. If a few prominent ladies would but say, “We will call only on the persons whom we really wish to see,” and would make their saying true, we should soon witness a decided change for the better.—t/**cago Tribune.