The Night Seattle's Young Men Came to the Ball Alone
At the Olympic Tennis Club's Seattle Theater ball, many eligible young men arrived stag. Their excuse was simple: carriages, bouquets and suppers had made courtship too expensive.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The lawn tennis tournament of the Olympic Club, which occupied four days of the week, and the very successful ball given by the same club at the Seattle Theater last Friday, formed the leading events in a social circle and, in fact, monopolized everything. The tournament proved a most agreeable affair and brought to the city many society people and players from Victoria, Tacoma and Everett, and showed conclusively that the Seattle players are fully entitled to rank as the leading players of the Northwest. The ball Friday evening was given in honor of the tournament and was a happy finale to the games and a splendid inauguration of the open winter social season. Everybody was there, old and young, married and single. Of the latter it was noticed that many, very many, young gentlemen came alone, while many of the very many marriageable young ladies came chaperoned by Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so. The fact that these same young gentlemen who came alone readily danced with these same young ladies whose only means of attendance lay in their coming under the wing of some married lady, proved conclusively that all were on friendly terms and led to some inquiry as to the cause.
"Can't afford it," laconically answered one well-known society gentleman. "To take a young lady means a carriage, a bouquet, a supper; no gentleman would think of inviting one of these ladies without all these extras, and I can't afford it; that's all there is to it."
It was mildly suggested that these same young ladies were known to be sufficiently democratic to be willing to come on a street car and forego the carriage, supper and other useless luxuries.
"The trouble is," replied the same young gentleman, "we have so long indulged these ladies with these luxuries that we dare not approach them on the proposition that you advance, and yet I think if a mutual understanding could be had on the subject, and these same young ladies, accustomed to all these side luxuries, would look the matter squarely in the face and come to parties, balls, etc., in street cars, I feel certain that many of us, in fact all of us, would gladly invite them."
This sentiment is found prevailing generally and it remains for the young ladies to meet the young gentlemen half way in the proposition.
“To take a young lady means a carriage, a bouquet, a supper; no gentleman would think of inviting one of these ladies without all these extras, and I can't afford it; that's all there is to it.”
In 1894, with the country in a deep depression, even Seattle's society pages registered the cost of keeping up appearances. The young men's complaint—carriage, flowers and supper as the price of a date—has a familiar ring in a city where the cost of going out is again part of the conversation. The proposed streetcar compromise sounds like a 19th-century version of splitting the bill.
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