The days of women's clubs were still in the far future, and the chief excitement of the ladies was an occasional ball. The Maryland assemblies began at six o'clock in the evening, and were supposed to end at ten, though the young folks often coaxed and cajoled the authorities into later hours. Card parties were part of the entertainment, and whist was enlivened by playing for money. The supper was often furnished from the ladies' kitchens and the gentlemen's gamebags, and was a tempting one. The costumes were rich and imposing. A witness of one of these Maryland balls writes: "The gentlemen, dressed in short breeches, wore handsome knee-buckles, silk stockings, buckled pumps, etc. The ladies wore--God knows what; I don't!" Dancing and music were the chief branches of the eighteenth-century maiden's education. I can fancy, as I read that "Patsy Custis and Milly Posey are gone to Colonel Mason's to the dancing-school," how they held up their full petticoats, and pointed out the toes of their red-heeled shoes, and dreamed of future conquests, although for one of them the tomb was already preparing its chill embrace. For women, life in town was pleasant enough with its tea-drinkings, its afternoon visits, and its evening assemblies, but on the plantations far from neighbors time must often have hung heavy on their hands. Yet even there, pleasures could be found, or made. When evening shut down over the lonely manor-houses along the Chesapeake, the myrtleberry candles were lighted, the slender-legged mahogany tables drawn out, and the Colonial dames seated themselves to an evening of cards. Small stakes were played for to heighten the interest of "Triumph, Ruff and Honors," "Gleke," or "Quadrille;" and when these lost their charm, there was the spinet to turn to. [Illustration: Spinet.] In those primitive days people still loved melody. "A little music" was called for with enthusiasm, and given without hesitation. There was no scientific criticism to be feared when the young men and maidens "raised a tune." Their list of songs was not long; but familiarity lent a deeper charm than novelty. "Gaze not on Swans" was a favorite in the seventeenth century. "Push about the Brisk Bowl," while well enough at the hunt supper table, was banished from the drawing-room in favor of "Beauty, Retire!" a song beginning-- "Beauty, retire! thou dost my pitty move; Believe my pitty and then trust my love." The writer does not make it quite clear why he wishes Beauty to retire, nor why she moves his pity. In fact, the case seems quite reversed in the last stanza: "With niew and painfulle arts Of studied warr I breake the hearts Of half the world; and shee breakes mine; And shee, and shee, and _shee_ breakes mine!" Through the lapse of more than one century, we hear the echo of those young voices, rising and falling in the air and counter of the quaint old melodies.