The ball room of the Astor House Hotel was packed on Thursday with jo big and merry throng for a fancy dress dance arranged by the Russian Benevolent Society, and the promoters must have been well satisfied with the financial result. As a matter of fact it was more "fancy dress" in name than actuality, but this was to the good from the treasurer's point of view, for a bevy of young ladies in Russian costumes, on duty at the doorway, levied $1 fine on everybody garbed in ordinary evening attire.
It was a distinctly cosmopolitan gathering, all nations rallying to the appeal, even to a number of Chinese ladies and gentlemen, The majority of the Russians present appeared in fancy dress and most of them favoured the uniforms and national costumes of their country, which alone were sufficient to give gay appearance to the room. Then, of course, there were the inevitable pierrots and ballet girls, a sprinkling of both the grotesque and the mystic and some ladies of the harem, but very little beyond these.
However, the lack of fancy coe tumes did not spai] the evening and the company danced merrily on through a long programme to the excellent music of the hotel's orchestra. There must have been few, too, who came away without prizes of one sort or another, for long tables, the breadth of" the room, were piled high with them, sufficient almost for the whole gathering.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.