Religion: Dean on Shakers

New York’s Bishop William Thomas Manning is an austere sermonizer, not inclined to denounce the frivolities of Manhattan socialites who give money to his Cathedral of St. John the Divine. More of a pulpit moralist is the Bishop’s right-hand man, the Very Rev. Milo Hudson Gates. Last week the chubby-cheeked Dean beheld a newspaper photograph of eight Manhattan girls practicing shaking cocktails for a benefit. Last Sunday at a special Cathedral service for the Colonial Dames of America, Dean Gates told of these “quite charming debutantes, with a background of gin and whiskey bottles and the foreground of a bar—all proudly holding up cocktail shakers—and the notice stated the debutantes ‘will serve the cocktail which promises to have a truly elephantine kick.’ ” Driving his point home, he humphed: “I should think one of the things the present members of the Colonial Dames could do is to protest against some of the things that pass as ‘smart’ in modern society.”