Momus, Comus & Rex

Trains bound for New Orleans carried many an extra coach last week. Steamships had full lists. Air passengers coasting down toward the city at twilight saw its bright crescent glittering with extraordinary brilliance. Mississippi Valley farmers, fun-hunters from the North, socialites from the South, soldiers, sailors, beggars, gamblers, sportsmen and bootleggers packed together in broad Canal Street, looked up at huge electric signs forming the letters K O M (Krewe of Momus, Son of Night & Lord of Misrule). By those letters they knew that the Carnival had begun.

One of the oldest (106) and most famed of U. S. civic celebrations. New Orleans' Mardi Gras Carnival is for local socialites a formal, exclusive occasion; for merchants and hotelmen, a golden harvest; for visitors and the man-in-the-street one good long party. Last week's party began six days before Ash Wednesday. Through packed streets lumbered float after gaudy float bearing the cinematic tableaux of the Krewe of Momus. Red, green, yellow and purple flares dimmed street lights, sent choking fumes up toward windows from which thousands of heads leaned. At the Municipal Auditorium the parade halted, maskers moved from floats to stage. A band opened the ball. Masked King Momus danced with Miss Irene Rice, queen of the ball. Afterward, far into the morning, matrons & maids receiving "call-outs" danced with the maskers, who left each a trinket. All week the balls continued, while in the streets the crowds, warming to the fun, bought balloons, horns and other noisemakers. Tuesday morning youths and maids who had been out most of the night before at the ball of Proteus (Old Man of the Sea) & Queen (Marjorie Stair), got up early, piled into dozens of trucks padded with hay, drove through the streets of New Orleans in the wake of the parade of Rex, King of Carnival (Coco-Colaman A. B. Freeman). Crowds packed from building line to car tracks threw confetti, cot ton balls, grabbed at shoes dangling over the sides of the trucks. Meanwhile, up from the river came another parade, headed by Joseph O. Misshore, Negro embalmer, in a beaded leather suit, wearing the huge feather headdress of the Zulus, followed by a court of the Dukes of Africa. King Zulu led his retinue down North Rampart Street through admiring dusky throngs who planned to dance late that night at the Zulu ball. King Rex went on to the City Hall to receive the keys of the city and to the Boston Club to toast Queen Yvonne White, debutante daughter of Broker Sidney Johnston White. All afternoon maskers danced in the streets. After dinner came the parade of Camus (Spirit of Revelry). Before midnight the streets were growing quiet. In the Auditorium was held the exclusive Ball of Comus, whose Queen was Lucille Williams, debutante daughter of Lum berman Charles Seyburn Williams. At the stroke of twelve, before the Court of Comus appeared Rex & Queen. Everybody danced until morning, ate & drank until sunup, went home to sleep and fast for 40 days.

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