Invitation To A Ball OR CHARITY EVENT
The word "ball" is never used excepting in an invitation to a public one,
or at least a semi-public one, such as may be given by a committee for a
charity or a club, or association of some sort.
For example:
The Committee of the Greenwood Club
request the pleasure of your company
at a Ball
to be held in the Greenwood Clubhouse
on the evening of November the seventh
at ten o'clock.
for the benefit of
The Neighborhood Hospital
Tickets five dollars
Invitations to a private ball, no matter whether the ball is to be given
in a private house, or whether the hostess has engaged an entire floor of
the biggest hotel in the world, announce merely that Mr. and Mrs. Somebody
will be "At Home," and the word "dancing" is added almost as though it
were an afterthought in the lower left corner, the words "At Home" being
slightly larger than those of the rest of the invitation. When both "At"
and "Home" are written with a capital letter, this is the most punctilious
and formal invitation that it is possible to send. It is engraved in
script usually, on a card of white Bristol board about five and a half
inches wide and three and three-quarters of an inch high. Like the wedding
invitation it has an embossed crest without color, or nothing.
The precise form is:
Mr. and Mrs. Titherington de Puyster
At Home
On Monday the third of January
at ten o'clock
One East Fiftieth Street
The favour of an answer
is requested
Dancing
or
Mr. and Mrs. Davis Jefferson
At Home
On Monday the third of January
at ten o'clock
Town and Country Club
Kindly send reply to
Three Mt. Vernon Square
Dancing
(If preferred, the above invitations may be engraved in block or shaded block type.)
