Waterbury Evening Democrat

TEST FOR COLONIAL BELLES
Girls Paraded Around a Divan Until
Chosen for the Dance.

It is a great pity that the tread-mill has vanished. It was the quaintest and most important feature of the social life at White Sulphur Springs, and had not its like anywhere in the world. Some wit of colonial days gave the great room that name. Here all the girls and their mothers met after supper preceding the dancing of the evening german. In the center of the room was a circular divan, and around this the girls paraded either with their mothers, their chaperons or in pairs. The object was to be chosen for the german. Woe to the girl who was left.

If this happened the first two nights, tears and agony were followed by retreat. It was a cruel test for any woman's nerves, yet it continued as the foremost custom of the place for nearly a century. The real belles were snatched by partners before they had advanced many steps in the parade, but many a girl had her heart almost broken because she was too young and too intense to know that failure to "catch a beau" for the dance did not write one down a failure elsewhere.

Round and round the parade circle until the dance was well on in the ballroom. For this hour girls and matrons wore their proudest array of clothes.

It was this steady tramp, tramp over the same worn way that suggested the name of the treadmill.

It must have been a rarely lovely sight, despite the strain, in Colonial days when the belle with patch and powder, in satin and brocade, met the gay cavalier with silk knee breeches, jewelled laces and silver buckles.

Miss Mary Lee, the eldest daughter of General Lee, was anxious to restore the custom, but, as Mrs Roger Pryor said: "Not under the glare of electric lights. It needs candles to put it in keeping."