Inept Headline

FLORENCE MILLS

WEDS F. E. ALTEMUS

So said a headline in The New York Times one morning last week. Readers who cast a breakfast-table glance at this announcement were suddenly possessed of a curious emotion. Their eyes raced down the column. "The bride," they read, "wore a gown of white satin trimmed with old rose point lace and cut with a court train. Her veil of tulle was held with orange blossoms and she carried a shower bouquet of white orchids and lilies of the valley." An amazing picture rose in the minds of the Tory breakfasters--that of a fashionable church, wall-eyed ushers, pretty bridesmaids, a young bridegroom of an excellent Washington family and, amid all the diaphaneity of lace and flowers so dewily described by the Times reporter, a bride who wheeled upon the shocked congregation a dusky face.

The only Florence Mills familiar to the public is Florence Mills, the darktown strutter, famed Negro cabaret dancer. This fact, disregarded by the composer of the Times inept headline, caused the well-informed readers to gag upon their three-minute eggs. The real bride was, they discovered, white.