p. 83 | New Year's Calls

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 27, 1872

New Year's Calls.

A CORRESPONDENT thus describes the mode of making New Year's calls in New York City:—

New Year's day is a favorite season for calls in the city. This year the calls were kept up as usual. The “style” of a New York New Year's call is this. From two to six young men hire a coach, and early in the morning commence their rounds. They pay a visit to every house where they enjoy an acquaintance, and in many cases where the acquaintance is extremely limited. At each house it is supposed that a side-table contains plenty of intoxicating drinks. At the residences of the wealthy, it is champagne and high-priced wines and brandies. A glass is drank, a “happy New Year” is wished, and off go the visitors to the next house. Some young men boast that they make twenty, thirty, or forty calls. At each place they drink something. Imagine a young man not in the habit of imbibing, going through the trial of that number of glasses of champagne, wine, brandy, and egg-nogg, and you can imagine the condition in which many found themselves at night on New Year's day. It may be surmised that they were, in many instances, beastly intoxicated, and not to draw too fine a point of it, such was the case.