The Dance Party of the Lebanese Women's League

The rain clouds gathered up their threads and parted to reveal a warm sun on the twelfth of February, as though the beauty of the weather had made an appointment with the party of the Lebanese Women's League, whose coming a select number of the people of the Lebanese capital had been awaiting. No sooner had the clock announced five that Sunday than this elite of Beirutis came flocking to the Capitol Hotel, where three great halls held their throng.

At the head of the invited guests, among the men of politics, was he under whose patronage the party had been placed, the Honorable Bernardo Flores, Chargé d'Affaires of the Venezuelan Legation, with Madame his wife — the two donated three thousand Lebanese lira to the League. From the figures of society and the economy came Messrs. Georges Saydah and Naim Majdalani; the gathering also included no small number of the men and women of letters, the press, medicine, and art.

The music lavished its sweetest strains, so that feet grew eager for the dance, and the guests thronged to it in couples, filling the two floors prepared for them: one adjoining the band, the other with bounds stretching away to the table of honor, at whose center sat the president, Mrs. Heneni Tarcha. The dancers were surprised by two competitions whose prizes had been provided by the magazine The Woman's Voice, now nearing its eleventh year — “a lily in the field of the Lebanese press,” as it was put in the program distributed to those present, whose pages teemed with a long list of raffle prizes presented by the most famous commercial houses, numbering no fewer than fifty! And this besides two first prizes entitling their winners to fly on a magic carpet through the wide open sky: Beirut–Cairo on the lines of Misr Airlines, and Beirut–Jerusalem on the lines of the Jordanian airline company.

The strains of “The Blue Danube” did not at first succeed in drawing dancers to the waltz competition, as though bashfulness kept them from rising; but Strauss's melodies were not long in winning the contestants' regard, and they circled and spun until dizziness overtook them! The prize fell to Mrs. Victoria Harmoush, who gave proof of a light foot although she is the mother of three boys and a girl! (With this remark we fear we expose ourselves to the criticism of her husband, owner and director of the newspaper al-Intiqad!)

From the classics the music passed by degrees to jazz, and the samba competition was announced; its winner was the slender Miss Agnes Fakhri, in a beige tailleur tailored by Samaha.

Mrs. Tarcha herself, together with Madame Flores, oversaw the distribution of the many remaining prizes, aided by the efforts of the party's directors, “the three poles”: Mrs. Arsanios, Mrs. Majdalani, and Mr. Charles Saad — whose closing rounds, we feared, must have involved a spinning fiercer than the waltz's, and deadlier!

Among the many prize winners we single out for mention the owners of those gentle hands by whose activity every field of good works in this whole country prospers. So Mesdames Laure Tabet, Rose Kettaneh, Salwa Mahmasani Moumina, Zahiyah Dughan, Layla Saad, Najla Saab, and Dr. Jamal Karam Harfush received gifts trifling beside their kindness toward the League and their encouragement of this delightful occasion.