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Show 5 ! And in went the Society F I I at the $60000 C i '' & wA Rich Mrs. McBride's "Venetian M Sdf U ; I Night" Was fmiS I Quite a Society lff' ' 1 ' If1 'iJ1' i I-r-riTE next time St. Louis society 2 out to a really recherche function will all the buds wear bathing suits and all the chappies water wings? Prcb-! Prcb-! ably For the St. Louis haute monde j learned a watery lessen at the $00,000 coming out parly given by the very rich Mrs William Cullen McBrido for her beau-I beau-I Uful daughter, Dorothy. Aquatic?, of course aren't custcmnarv at I all St. Louis soirees, nor was spiash-Jn- Ul'4-spiash-out scheduled to be played at j Mefiride's perfectly stunning affair. It was a little surprise, caused quite un-v. un-v. :; ugly by Vtio man who built the gondola.-. Hi was such a nice man, too Vandyke j beard and everything. Not a bit the com mon carpenter. And when he said he l knew all about Venice and could build the L t. i gondolas you ever saw, whoever would nave thought they would wabble? Certainly not the belles auu beaux, 1 swe:"y ringing "Soft Venetian Moon'' J abo:rd the gondola" pne minute and I swallowing quarts of the Mississippi RIv?r c the next, I After Mrs. McBride's experience with I Bptde-fn-Ainerlca gondolas oth; St. Louis mamas are likely to provide dryer settings I for their daughters' debuts. Tho Sahara desert, for example, with camel warrant 1 II not to be tippy and sand Instead of surf to receive tottery guests. I But Mrs. McEride had such a splendid Idea Vecice! The wonder city of tho I Old World moonlight on the Cathedral I Of St Mark the shadowy Palace of the Doges carnival and romance guitars, tnand jiias and serenades clgnores and sig- Mis 8 Dorothy McBride, Heiress, Whose Debut Party Because of iHo Wobbly Gondol.y Became Somcwnat Damp. ft norlnas canals gondolas! gondo-las! The thought of the gondolas black, snaky gondolas weaing in and out the canals In the soft radlar.ee of the crescent moon was simply irresistible. Miss Dorothy Dor-othy McBride should be introduced to St. Louis society iu the setting of "A Night in i Venice.", and gondolas would ba tho crowning g touch, the piece de rests- h tance, tho cremc de la I crcme of the evening. TT iV-V-'v T. I I H A Crner of the Grnd CttDfcl Whicl W" Pa-t of th Miniature Ven.ce Created Next Door to th. McBride Home. B (O) 111-', Litcrualiuual Feature S ' i CIS? j " "The scene was as fairy-like as Venice itself," wrote St. Louis reporters. "Multi-colored lights cast a Tismafcic effulgence over the rippling waters. F.earful lest such elegance be sallied, the electricians were attired in full evening dress." .Mrs McBride wa9 quite prepared to send all the way to Europe for gondolas, if necessary, for monoy was no object in Dorothy's debut. It was lavished right and left. Mrs. McBride converted an entire en-tire city lot next door to the McBride home on fashionable Washington Terrace and hired a regiment of architects and workmen to build a scaffolding S7 by 102 feet and 24 feet high the Cathedral of St-tfark. St-tfark. They built another 90 by 120 feet tho Doge's Palace They due; a Jllch. four feet deep and seven reel wide, around tho lot and lined it with galvanized Iron the Grand Canal. Then remained only tho gondolas Because Be-cause thero was scarcely time to order a dozen assorted gondolas, fob Venice, Mrs. McBride for a moment was Id despair. Then there came the nice gentleman of tho Vandyke beard, and her heart rejoiced. "Gondolas?" said the nice gentleman. "I can make 'em In my sleep. Gondola is my middle name. What I don't know about gondolas ain't in tho book. Me and gondolas gon-dolas we're just like that!" He got tho Kondola contract, and ho filled it after a fashion When they stood upon the ways, all set for launching a dozen black and snaky pondolas, "as real," naively said one of the St Louis reporters, "as any gondolas that ever held tho reclining re-clining form of one of Lord Byron's fair companions" Mrs. McBride was entranced. en-tranced. No ono thought for a minute to take a trial spin. Such suspicion would have been an insult to a work of art and the Vandyke board. To say that all St. Loitis was excited by the preparations for the Mi Bride fete is to be unjust to its citizenry's capacity for enthusiasm. Only 4,r0 fortunate mortal.", mor-tal.", the bonniest of tbe bon ton, received bids to Dorothy's debut, nut some 450,000 -trice, Inc. Orcat nniam Right ReservtM read about it and talked about it aad, where possible, went out of their way to pass tho McBride home and peek at the Doge's Palace, the Cathedral of St. Mark and the gondolas. But let tho scribes for the St Louis papers who covered the historic occasion for the local press describe tho brilliant scene. "Last night's ball," said one, "was Venice itself to those who had not before visited tho City of the Doges and Venice revisited to the guests who knew the real city. The society belles and beau bidden to tho carnival car-nival became for the night fair ladies and gallant gentlemen of Venice; December's cold gave way before the languid warmth of a Summer's night, and a city lot became be-came a glorified spot in which canal-encircled palaces reared themselves oer .night." Said another; "lagoons wound in and out between wide sidewalks that were connected at intervals by glistening white marble bridges, whose steps, flanked bv alabaster urns holding hundreds of American Amer-ican Beaut roses pointed the wa; to the lagoons Lagoon5? thai contained a real flow of wafer, and though from the far-famed far-famed Mississippi, as attractive, as strange aDd fair.v-llke as the Old World water that kisses the feet of the palace facades in beautiful Venice . . . Multi-colored lights in the interiors of tho gondolas and jeweled mirror reflectors cast a prismatic effulgence over the water . . . Long before the guests arrived electricians and workmen work-men added finishing touches to the scene, so that nothing possibly could go wrong. Fearful lest the elegance of tho scene should be sullied by a mechanician In working clothes, the eleetrlelnns and their helpers were attired In full evening dress." It must have been th unaccustomed pinch of a dress Bhlrt around the pturdy wM'1 torsos of carpenters, ditch diggers, masons HI and gondola builders hampered them from V doing their full duty as . guardians of the public H A safety or else none or V" them belonged to the Life ,: Savers' Union, for the re- H porters were slightly 1 in error when they H jtoijfc wrote. "Languorously - gliding over tbe 'r bosom of the minia- ''' tur canal wen gon 'kT J-'oia?- Those p.c- ' i. i't4 turcsque craft, hung I jtajKS !' "i,s i -ay Jl &$f CmMPBMHn tapestries, with ar- tistlcally garbed gon- H . ".i . : v. - r niiKh H In demand during the Am evening. The dark yondoliei., the while jL- j i. : - ' V barks, sang gay I" " cnetian love songs to the fair young ft women and their escorts w n o Avere their pas-- users." 1 There might have been one gondola even two gondolas languorously gliding on thz canal's bosom, but what ot the others? H Girls and hoys, as they romped into Mrs. McHride's imitation Venice, shouted Tilth Bl delight v.a. a they oelield the gondolas. 9L In they piled Miss Elizabeth Terry, Miss Eliie Gemeao. Miss Margaret Stcddard, 'I M Nina Cullinane, Messrs Clarence jl Mallo. Weld Goltra, William Orihwein vj and dozens of other representatives of the . younger set of St. Louis. The crescent moon shone down on merry faces, exquisite toilettes and $1,000 gowns tkM galore. The dark waters of the canal rip-pled rip-pled with phosphorescent reflections of the fairy lights. "Strum, strum" went the WlA guitars and mandolins. The gondoliers shoved off a little shakily. Down the Ifl greased ways slid the awfully cute gon- M dolas. "Ain't we got fnji?- -lemnndcd the belles and bloods of Si. Louis. And .hen lIH somebody rocked the boat . . sfl Let a merciful curtain be drawn across IH the damp details of the catastrophe. The gondolas refused to gon! Tho soft thrum of guitars and the gay Venetian love songs J gavo place to screams and gurgles, and I the dark and picturesque gondoliers changed to most matter-of-fact colored ', citizens sputtering, "FV ie Lawd, white '9 folks, I ain't mean to do dat!'' Cut it would have taken mor, than over- fl turned gondolas to wreck Miss Dorothy I McBrlde's $C0 000 debut party The dress-suited dress-suited mechanicians fished out the flappers and the chappies crawled to shore without any assistance. There were no casualties 1 -beyond the utter ruin of a number of t& scrumptious coiffures and as many gb r'''"'-- 1 m ,vas hi voted too perilous fo; that evening a ! r,r: ' ,l""" wro donned and in the words of the St Louis socMv f porters "the guests reappeared to'rejoln I the festivities and U the central space S- ! closed by the lagoons the nrn maker 5 paid tribute to Terpsichore until the we? 1 sma hours. ' J |