Entertainment Club to Events and Guests of Honor

Admiral and Mrs. Dewey have promised to come from Washington for the sole purpose of accepting a most pressing invitation from the officers and members of the Entertainment Club, of which they are honorary members, to be guests of honor at the first annual dinner Thursday, Feb. 23. A reception will precede and follow the dinner, at which the Hon. Robert B. Roosevelt, uncle of the President, will preside. Admiral and Mrs. Coghlan and Mr. and Mrs. Belmont will assist the president, Mrs. Roswell D. Hitchcock, in receiving. Invitations are confined entirely to club members, who are limited in the number of guests they may ask, owing to the large membership. When the Entertainment Club was organized one year ago many predictions were made that it could not live, as those to whom it catered were busier socially and philanthropically than all others in New York. Some feared that the entertainments could not be kept up to the very high standard established, but the club has grown to command respect. Applications for membership are pouring in. The club has given an “Evening With Wonderful Experiments in Radium,” an “Evening With Admiral Schley,” “A Russian Evening.” On Nov. 22, instead of one “star,” the members of the club and their guests were entertained by Admiral Coghlan, Israel Zangwill, John Kendrick Bangs, who dubbed the affair a Hagenback literary show; Marguerite Merington, Charles Battell Loomis, Burges Johnson and Wallace Irwin. On Dec. 13 the guests of honor were Baron Moncheur, the Belgian Minister, and Prof. Neriucx, who graphically described King Leopold’s work in the Congo. On Jan 10 Mrs. Gladstone Stuart talked on soul culture and read the Aura for many members of the audience, while on Jan. 28 Bishop Potter, Joseph Johnson, Jr., president of the Subway Tavern Co., and Frederick S. Lamb made most eloquent addresses. The receptions, which follow each entertainment, are very informal, giving every member of the club the opportunity of welcoming and questioning those by whom they have been addressed, also of becoming better acquainted with one another. There are programmes of unusual brilliancy yet to come. Om March 14 there will be a contest of cartoonists for a loving cup. Later in the season Nikola Tesla, Admiral Sigsbee, Samuel Newhouse, the copper king, so well known throughout England as well as America, and many others of international fame, have promised to visit the club as guests of honor and talk on subjects of world-wide interest. There will be a “German Evening” and “Italian Evening” and evenings in other countries. Each member of the club is entitled to a card for six entertainments during the year, no matter what season he or she may join. A most unusual thing is that there are more of the sterner than of the gentler sex in the club, whose organizer and president is Mrs. Roswell D. Hitchcock, 334 Fifth avenue, Manhattan. The vice-president is Mrs. J. Fred Pierson, of 20 West Fifty-second street, Manhattan.