New York Fire Department Annual Ball: 37th

     “Grafulla’s bands—string and promenade—furnished the music for the occasion.  At half past nine o’clock the ball opened with an overture and grand march by the band, and the platform was quickly taken possession of by a bewildering crowd of promenaders and dancers.  There were twenty-five dances and as many promenades on the programme, which were not finished until some of the ‘wee sma’ [sic] hours’ had flown by. . . . There could have been no less than five thousand persons present, and considering that there were one thousand eight hundred tickets sold, each admitting a gentleman and two ladies, five thousand will fall short of the actual number that attended the Academy during the evening.  The scene from the second tier was one of brilliancy and splendor.  The numerous forms on the platform below sliding through the mazes of a quadrille, whirling round in the waltz or dashing through the spirited galopede [sic]; the glare of myriad gas jets and the flashing of bright jewels and brighter eyes, the waving streamers and serpentine festoons that clung around each pillar, the leader’s baton directing the grand array of instruments that spoke now in trumpet tones and again in zephyr strain, and the triple tiers of galleries, with their glittering crowd of beauty and fashion, formed a kaleidoscope of splendor and magnificence such as hasheesh [sic] drunken Arab never conjured up in his mind, or the genii of the lamp never exhibited to Aladdin.”

     Includes program. “The company formed a brilliant assemblage of both sexes, the lady portion of which were mostly attired in all the brilliancy and bad taste which usually characterizes entertainments of this kind.  About four thousand guests were present.  Dancing, of course, was the order of the evening. . . .

     . . . [T]he dancing was kept up until 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, and the whole affair was a success.”