FULL DRESS FIBS.

Observer, Volume 9, Issue 532, 2 March 1889, Page 4

FULL DRESS FIBS.

[Are any of chese ' Full Dress Fibs ' told at Auckland hops ? We rather fancy one or two of them are old acquaintances. The article is from the Chicago TrUnuw.']

IT was at the club. Tom, an old-timer, was talking to a youth in this strain : — ' You have the conceit of a first season. Now, now,' soothingly, ' don't get hot, my boy. I was just the same after my first season. Everyone is. It takes several seasons to knock it out of a man. He must learn the ballroom tricks before he fully realises how often a smile or a look that seems to flatter conceals a little ballroom deceit. My boy, if you knew how often you. have been duped—' 1 Name a time.' ' With pleasure. It won't flatter your vanity, but it may be of value to you this winter. Do you remember at Mrs Blank's ball last winter when Miss Brown told you she was sorry her programme was full ? You thought she really was sorry.' ' I thmk so yet.' ' Well, she certainly looked it, but she could have given you any one of five or six dances.' 'Ah, there, I have you, Tom ; you are speaking without authority. I saw her programme, old man, and it was full — not a dance left.' ' And yet, when I went to her afterwards, she rubbed off one name and gave me the dance.' 'Then some one else was cheated out of a dance ?' • Not at all. She rubbed out the initials "J.J." ' Who did they stand for ?' ' Jennie Jones. My boy, that programme was filled up in the ladies' dressing-room. It is an old trick and a good one. Watch for it this winter, and you won't be so impressed with a young lady's sorrow and disappointment when she asks you why you didn't come earlier, and tells you that by your neglect you have allowed two or three stupid bores to get dances she had much rather have given to you.' 1 Tom,' after a pause, • is that straight ?' 1 True as gospel, Jack. It has been played on me many a time. Sometimes I have known it, and sometimes, I suppose, I have not. ' Give me another instance, Torn.' ' Well, do you remember the time at the South

Side dancing class when you hunted high and low for Miss De Vere, and, after you had given up the search, she appeared on the floor with George Hopkins ?' ' Yes ; and she was angry because I had not come to claim her. She made a great fuss about it.' 'Of course ; tol J you that if you did not care enough for her dances to claim them she would never dance with you again ; said that you left her alone so long that she was obliged to dance with that. Hopkins, and all that sort of stuff, didn't she ?' ' Yes ; something to that effect.' ' And all that time, my boy, she was hidden away talking to Hopkins and was fairly trembling lest you should discover her.' ' Oh, that's too much, Tom,' ' Her engagement to Hopkins was announced last week? 1 ' Ye-es.' ' Well ?' ' Well, perhaps you're right. It isn't flattering to a man's vanity, though.' 1 No, and that's what I mean by losing a first season's conceit. But I can give you another example. You remember the time that I came to you and told you there had been an error that had made us both engaged to Miss Smith for the same dance ?' ' Yes, and you were mighty mean about it, too.' * Certainly. We divided the dance. I took the first half and danced about four-fifths.' < That's what you did.' ' Part of the programme, Jack. It was a mean trick, but it was a regular society one. Let me detail you my conversation with Miss Smith as near as I can remember it.' ' " May I have a dance, Miss Smith ?" I asked, '" I wish I could give you one," she replied, " but my programme is full." ' Now that would have satisfied you, but I was on good terms with Miss Smith, and was also up on social tricks. So I said : 1 " Can't I divide with some one ?" '"Well, you might have engaged a dance beforehand," she said. ' Whose ?' ' She gave me your name, and you remember the fairy tale I told you— engaged it before she got her programme ; forgot to put it down, etc., etc. 1 You played that on me, Tom ?' 'Oh, yes,' nonchalantly. 'You'll be doing it yourself soon. Can't play it on an old-timer, though, Jack ; remember that.' ' Then, according to your story, I'm no one and you're a favourite.' 'Not by any means. The only difference is that I know the tricks and play them when they come my way and you can't. I've had the same thing happen to me times without number. But, my boy, when a young lady upbraids me for not claiming a dance that she took precious good care I should not claim, I don't feel elated ; I tell her I am sorry, and my sorrow is just as genuine as her reproaches. We are both telling full-dress fibs. But you, Jack think you've been a villain for not taking her away from that horrid Brown. Moreover I'm frequently caught on the torn dress or the broken heel tricks.'* ' What are they ? ' The most common of all. If a young lady be dancing with some one she does not care to dance with, she suddenly discovers that a piece of lace or something of that sort is torn. Then it is : '" Will you please escort me to the dressingroom? some one has torn my dress.' ' Certainly you will. It won't take her amoment, she says, and you wait around until the last strains of the waltz are dying away, when she appears. She is so sorry ; the attendant was busy, and she couldn't get it fixed at once. Of course, sometimes the dress is really torn, and the beauty of the scheme is that no man ever lived who could tell whether it was or not.' 1 The broken heel ?' 1 Oh, that isn't so often practised, for it puts an end to all dancing for the evening. Still, I suppose you have gone to claim a dance at some time and found the young lady t ensconced in a corner of the conservatory with some favoured admirer. She is sorry — they always are— she broke the heel of her slipper during the last dance and won't be able to dance any more that evening. You think for a moment of sitting the dance out with her, but you remember what a tete-a-tete time she was having with the other man when you came up, and you decide not to suggest it. There is a peculiar feature in this ; that in my 10 years experience in society I never knew of a heel to be broken off until the latter part of the evening, or of a case where she did not sit out the rest of the evening with the man she was with when the accident happened. In fact, I have known of cases, where when a man was pretty sure of his ground, he suggested that the breaking of a heel might end the programme.'