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==First Real Party==

And in Baltimore, Md, a slender, dark-haired, 18-year-old girl smiled and bowed prettily, attending her first real party.

It was war-riddled December, 1914, when Wallis Warfield &mdash; today Mrs. Ernest Simpson of London &mdash; made her debut at the Bachelor's Cotillon, famous in Baltimore traditions.  Today Mrs. Simpson's shopping trips, the parties she gives and those to which she goes are of world-wide interest.  Mrs. Simpson's name, appearing in the British Court Circular, exclusive journal of the most exclusive society in the world, starts ripples of excitement reaching from London to Shanghai and Sidney.

How different from that night, Dec. 7, 1914 !

Baltimore's Lyric theater, banked with palsm and potted plants, had become, according to a newspaper report, "a bower of beauty where light and color mingled to form almost a tropical atmosphere of warmth and fullness of life."  Forty-nine debutantes were there to make their bows.  Forty-nine young girls, each wearing a new dress and carrying flowers, tried to look serene and calm, aware the event was the most important, to date, of their brief lives.