Produced by ellinora, Harry Lamé and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Text that were printed in italics in the source document has been transcribed between _underscores_. Small capitals have been changed to ALL CAPITALS.
More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text.
No reader will be permitted to pass beyond this page who is not actually _in_ society. This book is not for those who dwell in the gloom of mere respectability, or the blaze of sheer wealth. It is a pasturage intended solely for those who bask in the sunlight of the smartest society.
Those whose social standing could conceivably be classed with that of brewers, green-grocers, minor poets, munition magnates, linen drapers, provincial actors, and cubist sculptors, _must not_ trespass within these covers.
If your name appears in all the Social Directories; if you are a member of six or eight fashionable clubs; if you never plan a dinner without unpotting a pound or so of pâté de foie gras; if you never witness an opera except from an opera box; if you never go to the city except in an imported motor-car, why _then_ just knock at the title page, open the door, walk in, take off your monocle--or your turreted tiara--and make yourself perfectly at home.
_Elucidating the Little May-Pole Festival on the following page_
Reader, will you join a gay dance Of the younger Social Set, And, amid their merry May-dance, Personally pirouette? Don a garment, smart and snappy, Wear your most engaging smile, Banish boredom and be happy-- In the world of chic and style.
Cedric woos Celeste--who dances-- Vowing love that never dies; Ethel sees adoring glances In athletic Albert’s eyes; Peter--solvent as Mæcenas, Lures a mermaid to the shore, Telling her she looks like Venus, Which, of course, she’s heard before.
You may dance, while Signor Cupid Fiddles an entrancing tune; Or, if you find jazzing stupid, There are gardens--and a moon! Life, and all its animation Bids us join the mad mêlée, And, to use an old quotation, Gather rose-buds while we may.
Every make of merry mortal, Wise or otherwise, is here, And this page is but the portal Of another world made clear. Yes, a world, and you may buy it In this giddy, gaudy book, Though, of course, I can’t deny it Has a rather Fish-y look!