STARTLING DEVICES FOR ENTERTAINING GUESTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2362, 1 June 1899, Page 56

STARTLING DEVICES FOR ENTERTAINING GUESTS.

There appears to be no limit to human ingenuity when it is exercised in the entertainment of guests ; and it is to be feared that some of the devices of enterprising hosts have little to recommend them beyond their novelty. One of the most remarkable of recent entertainments was a '"nigger cake-walk," given by young Mr W. K. Vanderbilt, son of the famous millionaire, to many of the exclusive New York " four hundred," and a certain cellar near the Fifth Avenue has been the scene of several recent fashionable entertainments.

Jn this "gloomy and badly-lighted vault the leaders of American society love to meet. The cellar is equipped as a dungeon and torture-chamber. The walls are festooned with chains and adorned with instruments of torture. The very waiters are garbed as convicts, and the guests eat and drink prison fare from prison utensils, drinking in turn from a bottle which is circulated among the guests. An entertainment as questionable a\ taste as it is happily novel is due to the ingenuity of Mrs Stuyvesant Fish, one of the leaders of New York society.

It is called the " reversible dance " from the fact that all the dancers wear their costumes reversed ; that is, with the back part in front and vice versa. The grotesque aspect of a man wearing his " swallowtails" in front, or of a woman "like Lot's wife " perpetually facing backward, may be more easily pictured than admired. Anothei' novel entertainment is the " re-volver-shooting party," to which ladies are exclusively invited. A shooting gallery is fixed up, and ladies who wish to qualify as expert shots vie with each other in establishing records to an accompaniment of " tea and cakes."

Quite a picturesque " cellar-party " was recently given by a young lady of Doylestewn, Philadelphia. The cellar was converted, by means of rich Eastern draperies, into a Moorish room. The ceiling was painted to represent the sky, with the rising and setting sun and "galaxies of stars." The floor was carpeted with costly rugs, ami the " cellar " was flooded with electric light ; while palms, spruce-trees, and cosy crrners completed its charms.

One of the prettiest devices, almost worthy of Heliogabalus, was prepared by a New York millionaire for 30 of his friends al a dinner which cost £2000. The centre of the table was cut out, and the space filled with maiden hair fern, into which wera 'tiSfcrfced 3000 exquisite roses, each of which jost, 6s, the cost of this rose centrepiece being thus £900. Delicate perfumes were sprinkled from .several silver fountains, and ••.L intervals showers of exquisite flowers fere rained on the guests from the ceiling. One wealthy entertainer surprised his guests by a vanishing table. At the jnd of each course the table disappeared through an opening in the floor, and shortly returned 'aden with all the delicacies :>f the succeed ing course. The ways in which Enslish hosts minister

to the entertainment of their guests &r$ countless. One famous host has laid down a cycling track on which his" guests can arrange handicaps ; another has provided an ice skating-rink; and several entertainers have had mazes constructed in their grounds to bewilder their friends.

The Duke of Sutherland has a miniature railway, perfect to the smallest details, on ■which his guests can make pleasant excur-. sions ; the Duke of Bedford and the Hon* Walter Rothschild have menageries ; other hosts have switchback railways and toboggan slides ; and many country houses, es-. pecially in France, have fully-equipped circuses, in which each guest is expected to contribute his share of the entertainment, from acting as clown to riding bareback or leaping through the hoops.