A Costly Feast, if true.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 858, 10 August 1888, Page 4

A Costly Feast, if true.

Banqueting Table Described by,a New York Correspondent of a London paper. The following details of a dinner which was given the other day by a New Fork lady may be read with interest by people who want to know the latest thing in the way of American extravagance : The dinner table was arranged about a miniature lake, in which palms, lilies, and ferns appeared to be growing, while tropical trees rose from the banks amid miniature parterres of flowers. Small electric lights, with vari-oolored globes, were arranged about the lake, and electricity was introduced under the water of the improvised lake and caused to dance about in immitation of vari-colored fish. There was a fountain in tho centre of the lake, and a colored glass ball, lighted by electricity, spurted up aud down a jet of crystal water. There was no cloth on the table, and each of the twenty courses served at tho dinner was placed before the guests on a natural palm leaf. The wall and room decorations—some of which came from Florida and South America —generally were of smilax, ferns, ivy and palm, mandarin,, banana, orange, and other trees. Hanging among them were hundreds of very small colored electric lights. The decorations of each plate cost SOdols, the favours fiOdols and the menus were painted to order at lOdols a-piece. The truffles came from Francfe and the strawberries cost 7. Oodois per bunch of five berries. Roman punch was served in oranges hanging from the natural trees, the pulp of the fruit been deftly removed, so that the guests picked oranges from the branches.—London Court Journal.