DRE s Li.
Year by year one of our most charming dances is the fancy dress ball given by the hospitable Customs Club. It is always a pleasure to visit the Club on a dancing night, for the conditions are always of the happiest. The floor has no equal in Shanghai, and the music and general rangements of the Committee are carefully looked to. But the charm of an evening under these auspices is heightened when fancy dress is worn, when the scene is one of bright colour. Moreover, fancy dress always seems to brighten the spirits of dancers. There is more spontaneous gaiety where each person is, if not disguised, at least representing something which he or she is not. So it proved at the fancy dress ball at the Customs Club on Saturday night, The affair started well, and passed off with a brilliancy and conspicuous success which must have richly rewarded Mr, W. B. Andrews, the energetic honorary secretary, and the Committee. The decoration of the Club itself took no small share in the general beauty of effect. Clover coloured-paper work, and that most graceful of plants, the bamboo, were utilied in a. very pretty scheme, As setting for the large number of guests who attended nothing could have been better. Te would be waste of words to insist on the care with which everything conducive: to comfort had been arranged for. The refreshment rooms, cloak rooms, and the vations side-shows, so to speak, which do 9 much to make or mar a dance, were a success in every sense of the word. The music was provided by a band unambitious in size, but eminently capable, and who kept that strict time which is the dancer's delight. As for the dancers themselves, they were as the sands of the' sea, and among s0 many fine dresses it were invit dies to select at random any one for special mention. Fancy dress was insisted on, and ladies and gentlemen alike had shown a great deal of taste would be. impossible to mention all the and ingenuity.
costumes juded the "Belle of les IL and his Queen. ed Kafir," the ~Huneh-Raden-Powell," and" Meph Jo OF the others. Hehlonder., clows phe men. " 1di wailers, firemen, Indians, Pierrots and Pierrottes, helped to make one of the prettiest gatherings that has been seen in Shanghai. an
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.