THE PINK LADY

The "Police Gazette," in announcing the suspension of next week's edition, has surrendered to Fate at last. Next Saturday, good citizens will buy their tabloids all unheeding, and there will be few to weep. But somewhere on the Styx, the shades that once thronged Rector's, Sherry's, and Delmonico's are remembering their old pink sheet. And in that Nirvana where horses go, many an old jade is tossing his head in memory of the Victorias and four-in-hands of old.

For in the seventies, the eighties, and the nineties, this "Gazette" was a power in the land. Then all America, save for wicked Manhattan, was one vast hinterland. Men gathered their families under mansard roofs; little girls in gingham and pigtails kicked their high shoes against the scrollwork of the porch. When the broad highway was muddy wagon track, men made no stir to journey afield. The village bar answered a man's thirst; and in the village barber-shop every voice had its part.

To this confraternity of shaving mugs came weekly the "Gazette" to echo the sins of the city. Jaws moved a little faster as men read of Carmencita's fateful night at Sherry's. And not only the villagers, but Manhattan's men-about-town turned to its pink pages to keep abreast of the tide of sin.

Now the cab-horse heights no longer; free-wheeling and the radio have pried men's feet from off the old wood-stove. Men go their several ways. The covers of the old "Gazette" live and move on the screen; and the tabloids, shock for shock, outdistance and undersell their progenitor. Upstart terriers have worried the old bloodhound to his death.