The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-11-28
The Girl of High Civilization Found To Be a
More Pleasing Dancer than the Untu-
t0red Red Man of the Western Plains.
WOman's Continued and Always Ener-
getic Pursuit of Good Complexion.
DR.. Peters, Ex-President Arthurs Physician,
Tells Why He Steadfastly Refused to Talk
Of the Condition of His Patient.
NEW YORK SOCIETY.
What Is Doing to Amuse It's DeyNtees Be.
fore the Season Opens.

WHAT Is DOlng TO Amuse ACS Uev8kFes DS.
fore the Season Opens.
Special to the Indianapolis Journal.
NEW YORK, Nov 27.-Society has this week
been active chiefly with its hands and feet.
Heads and hearts may have been used as usual,
and stomachs have no doubt been called on to
yield the customary pains and delights OF high
gastronomy, but the finger and-toe extremes of
anatomy have been excitedly interested. Ed
Heron-Allen an adroitly exploited Briton, has
caught the hands of our Fifth-avenue girls, and
they pay him ten dollars each for doing it. He
is palmist, who pretends to study the lines on
the insides of hands and thereby delineate the
character of the owner Society happens just
now to have time for an ephemeral bit
of nonsense, for the real season of gayety has
hardly set in, and SO palmistry be-
comes a transient fad. Heron-Allen's own
palm has first to be crossed by coin
of the magnitude of ten dollars, or it's
equivalent in paper money. Then he takes the
customers hand, gazes at it in a monomaniac
sort of way examines its lines through mag
nifying glass. draws it's outlines on cardboard,
and tIen dictates five hundred words so to a
shorthand secretary about the persons suppose
titous good qualities. Several seances at fash
ionable residences have been given at $50
apiece. Heretofore the belle who consulted
fortune tellers has made an adventure of it
putting herself into a semi-disguise of plain
clothes, driving to the place in close carriage
by circutous route and there buying for
dollar the ignorant mumblings of an ugly old
witch. To be served by neat polite, palaver-
ing fellow strikes her as a diverting novelty,
and he is getting rich very fast, besides having
good time cuddling dainty, exclusive hands,
that would recoil in resentment if his freedom
were social instead of professional
As to socetys feet, they have not begun to
dance for the winter yet but they are under as
siduous tuition. Terpsichorean fashions change
from season to season, and it is necessary every
November to learn how to waltz in December,
when the balls and receptions commence Some
of the girls take few private lessons, but most
of them are able, with little practice by them
selves, to accomplish the notifications de-
manded. Moreover, they watch closely all the
public performances that may give hints as to
new grace. Thus we have had Vienna Waltzes,"
a ballet in connection with opera at the Metro
politan, and it was easy to see that the fair
spectators eager scrutiny of the stage
waltzer6 was with a view to imitation,
and hundreds of feet we're mildly motion
ing, in the seclusion of long skirts, in imitation
of the pedal gymnastics which the footlights il
Illuminated as object lessons. Then, again, we
had a somewhat astounding illustration of how
not to do it. This was gwen by the students
who acted the Greek comedy before modish
audience at the Academy of Music. In their
conscientious representation of the Greeks. they
wore their own unembellished legs without so
much as powder or rouge to cover them, and the
display of unsymmetrcal awkwardness was
dreadful fancy that series of instantaneous
photographs, after the manner of Leland Stan
fords camera views of the trotting horss at sue
cessive instants of rapid gait would be won-
ders of disenchantment as to the Waiting beau.
1t may be that fashionable girls are unreason-
ably hard to please in the matter of masculine
grace. They forget that the poor fellows do the
best they can under natural disadvantages.
There was plenty of laughter in the sleeves of
the toilets at the steeple chases, last summer
and autumn, when the dandy amateur jockies
bumped themselves in the saddles: and yet,
when society assembled in considerable guam
tity, the other night, to see some uncivilized
poetry of motion by Indians the fun was still
greater. The ceremony of burying the Ratchet
and smoking the pipe of peace was performed
entertainment of about thousand spectators.
All New York was there; that is, the people who
imagine that they are the personages of New
York, the remainder of the inhabitants being
classified as the populace. When they are at
Newport there is positively nobody in New York.
Berry Wall, ex-king of the dudes, came in with
three of his subjects, all wearing spick- and-span
new silk hats with very tall crowns. Weary
Sims from Murray Hill stepped in on the way
home from the theater and dropped Imply into
chairs. Pelham steeple-chasers, Tuxedo Club
men, delegations from city clubs real and imita-
ton British swells of stolid aspect, and other
members of swelldom presented cards of invita-
ton. The showmen had artfully piqued their
curiosity by saying that the scene would be en-
pertaining even to this blase community The
Pawnees and Cheyennes had been at war for
many years, and before they could camp togeth-
er they must bury the Ratchet and smoke the
pipe of peace The ceremony was necessary
to keep them from going on the war path right
here in New York and scalping each other.
They might anyhow, get loose in the arena,
and produce cases of premature badness before
lighting up the pipe OF peace. The lecturer on
the spot. declared that it was going to be sol
emn ceremony, and he exhorted the elite of New
York not to indulge in unusual merriment.
Some fifty or more Indians in red blankets en-
tered. They yowled like pack Of coyotes.
They were Pawnees and Sioux inviting the
Cheyennes and Crows to come off the war path
and take something. The Cheyennes could be
seen on the war path behind some of the canvas
primeval forests at the other end of the garden.
They were furtive in their movements, and no
doubt if a Pawnee had recklessly wandered 800
feet from his wigwam at the west end of the
circus. and got lost In the labyrinth of
painted prairie and fret-sawed wood at