Invitation to a Ball

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.)