In far different style do people entertain on the other side of the water. In Paris, that very paradise of cookery, the substantial element of balls and parties is either wholly wanting or is but a very secondary consideration. A Parisienne will bid you to her house, and leave you to refresh exhausted Nature with a cup of tea and a sponge-cake. In summer she may vary the entertainment by offering you a glass of currant syrup and water. She would consider herself as utterly ruined in a financial point of view did she conceive that an assemblage of some twenty or thirty people would require anything more substantial. At entertainments on a larger scale, such as _soirees musicales_, evening receptions, etc., ices, coffee, sandwiches and a variety of small cakes are usually handed round during the course of the evening; and that is all. At the grandest of grand balls the supper is almost invariably composed entirely of cold dishes--chicken, filet of beef, fish with mayonnaise sauce, etc., with ices, cakes and delicious bon-bons. If extra magnificence in the matter of viands is aimed at, it is sought in the matter of unseasonable and consequently costly delicacies. Thus, at a ball which was given during the month of February last the feature of the supper was strawberries served in unlimited profusion. The substantiality, the abundance, the variety of one of our Philadelphia suppers, with its terrapin, its croquettes, its oysters dressed in half a dozen styles, its game and sweetbreads and chicken salad, its ices and Charlotte Russe and meringues, its fruits and flowers, its oceans of champagne, rivers of hock and lakes of claret punch, would make a Parisian open his eyes--ay, and his mouth as well. For, be it known, the foreigners who scorn suppers in their native land lay aside all such prejudices with marvelous celerity when bidden to a Philadelphia banquet.