1902.] BALCH — THE FIRST "ASSEMBLY ACCOUNT." 263 



pen's daughter Mary — better known as '' Polly " Shippen — has been 

 preserved, and reads as follows: 



" Philadelphia Assembly, 1790. 



The Favour of Miss P. Shippen' s 

 Company is requested for the Season. 



J. M. Nesbitt, W. Stewart, 



Geo. Meade, Jos. Redman, 



John Swanwick, George Harrison, 



Another card for the season of 1850, when three Assemblies were 

 given at Musical Fund Hall, is thus inscribed : 



"Assemblies. 

 " The Honor of 



Company is requested for the Season. 



" John M. Scott, ^ ^ James H. Blight, 



Thomas Cadwalader, 1 B. W. Ingersoll, 



Joseph Swift, William T. Twells 



Managers. -I 



Charles Willing, f ^ ' '\ Alexander Biddle, 



Richard Vaux, | | William W. Fisher, 



M. G. Evans, ' j [^ Bernard Henry, Jr." 



During the Civil War the Assemblies were completely stopped ; 

 but after the conclusion of that great struggle they were revived in 

 1866, at the Academy of Music, by Dr. Alexander Wilcocks, who 

 was a Manager before the war, William Henry Rawle and other 

 gentlemen. 



We Americans, in the rush and stress of every-day life, are too 

 apt to forget that those things we enjoy to-day are in a measure due 

 to those who built in an earlier time. It is good to have some 

 reverence for the experiences of the past as we prepare for the 

 future. Charles Lamb, in one of his sonnets, tells us: 



" 'Tis man's worst deed 

 To let the things that have been run to waste, 

 And in the unmeaning present sink the past : 

 In whose dim glass even now I faintly read 

 Old buried forms and faces long ago." 



While we should not worship what has been so much as to forget 



