Already some bore marks of premature encounters with confetti and cocktails.
Waiters and head-waiters went gliding and scurrying about, assigning guests to tables reserved months in advance.

Pages in flame-coloured and gold uniforms lifted the silken rope that stretched its barrier between the impatient crowd and the tables; managers verified offered credentials and escorted laughing parties to spaces bespoken.
Two orchestras, relieving each other, fiddled and tooted continuously; great mounds of flowers, smilax, ropes of evergreens, multi-tinted electroliers made the vast salon gay and filled it with perfume.
Even in the beginning it was lively enough though not yet boisterous in the city where all New York was dining and preparing for eventualities; the eventualities being that noisy mid-winter madness which seizes the metropolis when the birth of the New Year is imminent.
It is a strange evolution, a strange condition, a state of mind not to be logically accounted for.

It is not accurate to say that the nicer people, the better sort, hold aloof; because some of them do not.

And in this uproarious carnival the better sort are as likely to misbehave as are the worse; and they have done it, and do it, and probably will continue to say and do and tolerate and permit inanities in themselves and in others that, at other moments, they would regard as insanities--and rightly.
Around every table, rosily illuminated, laughter rang.

White throats and shoulders glimmered, jewels sparkled, the clear crystalline shock of glasses touching glasses rang continual accompaniment to the music and the breezy confusion of voices.
Here and there, in premonition of the eventual, the comet-like passage of streaming confetti was blocked by bare arms upflung to shield laughing faces; arms that flashed with splendid jewels on wrist and finger.
Neville, coolly surveying the room, recognised many, responding to recognition with a laugh, a gesture, or with glass uplifted.
"Stop making goo-goos," cried Mazie, dropping her hand over his wrist.
"Listen, and I'll be imprudent enough to tell you the very latest toast--" She leaned nearer, opening her fan with a daring laugh; but Ogilvy wouldn't have it.
"This is no time for single sentiment!" he shouted.