Palestine daily herald. [volume] (Palestine, Tex.) 1902-1949, 1908-12-17
WHITE HOUSE SEASON
To Be eay-opens Tonight With the
Cabinet Dinner-Miss Roosevelt
Will Soon Make Her Debut.
Special to the Herald.

Special to the Herald.
washington. D. c., Dec. 17.-Eyery-
thing in and around the White House
has been put in the best possible
order for the opening Of the last and
most brilliant social season under the
Roosevelt administration. The open
ing event will be the cabinet dinner
this evening and the season will close
with the army and navy reception on
Thursday, February IS. During the
Intervening time there will be round
of diplomatic receptions, diplomatic
dinners, judiciary receptions, the usual
supreme court dinner and congresSlon-
al receptions, all to be given on
Thursday evenings, intercepted with
many other, less formal social func-
lions. prime among them the ball to
be given on the evening of December
2S. in honor of Miss Ethel Roosevelt's
social debut.
The old historic mansion has wit
messed many interesting social events
under the changing administrations,
but probably never a season quite as
strenuous and brilliant as will be the
closing season of the present admin
istration Next winter Mrs. Taft will
be the First lady, and Washington
society is already specializing over the
prospects of the first "Taft season.
The three state dinners, the first of
which will take place tonight, will in
clude from forty to seventy guests.
That to the diplomatic corps will be
the largest, as it must include all the
chiefs of embassies and legations,
with the wife of each ambassador or
minister. The evening receptions will
be, as in former years, from 9 to
1890, and two thousand invitations
will be issued for these events. As
rule guests other than those of the
administration circle will be invited to
one reception only.
The President and Mrs. Roosevelt
will also receive as usual on New
Years day, but no cards are issued
for that occasion. Mrs. Roosevelt
has also planned number of must
Gales on Friday evenings during the
season, in addition to other minor So
cial functions, among them the ball
on the coming out of Miss Ethel
Roosevelt
There is every Indication that the
season just opening will be the gay
est the White House has seen since
the first winter of President Roose-
velt's administration, when his eldest
daughter, Miss Alice Roosevelt, now
Mrs. Longworth, was presented to So
ciety. The bail for Miss Ethel will be
given in the same historic room where
Abigail Adams dried her clothes and
which never was the scene of a gay
ball scene until during the Harrison
administration, when Mrs. Mckee
gave a cotillion.
In addition to the ball there will be
many dinners. luncheons, breakfasts
and receptions, from the beginning of
the New Year to the beginning of
March, when Mrs Roosevelt will turn
over the household affairs to her sue
cessor as lady of the White House.
Nearly all these social functions
are held on the lower floor of the
presidential mansion, which had been
changed but little under the succeed
ing administrations until it had reach
ed such a state of dilapidation that
President Roosevelt considered it ad-
visable to subject the antiquated, in
adequate and uncomfortable lower