"INFERNO," THE MODEL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1262, 7 May 1896, Page 10

"INFERNO," THE MODEL.

DANTE'S WEIRD WORK FOLLOWED IN BALLROOM DECORATION.

Chicago, March 28. Dante's " Inferno " furnished tho suggestion for a spectacular "domino" party at the Lakeside Club last night. It was tho most magnificent as well as tho most original of all the varied entertainments of that organisation. Nearly <IOO couples were in attendance. The odd decorations were kept a secret by the Entertainment Committee up to tho minute of entering tho ballroom. No ono was allowed on the floor not clad in tho ghost-like " domino." At midnight supper was served. Dancing lasted till IS o'clock. The Entertainment Committee—Emanual Newman, Leo 11. Hart, Samuel J. Marks and Louis J. Blum—received congratulations upon every hand for tho novelty of tho conception. KOCK-RIBBKD WONDERLAND. At 9.150 o'clock a bugler sounded a summons to the ballroom. 'J he guests in dominoes proceeded up the dimly-lighted passages to the top story. Entrance to the balhoom was through a low arch of bristling rock upon which appeared a skull and crossbones and tho legend: "All hope abandon ye who enter here." Every feature was a surprise on entering. The spacious auditoiiitm had been transformed into a rock-ribbed wonderland.

The colouring was as sombre as a subterraneous cavern might bu except for the triumph.? in calcium light effects which were revealed with tho unfolding of tho programme. At tho oast end of the ball tho beholder's attention was first riveted by the red form couchant of a monster devil. Ho covered the end of tho ballroom with his lugubrious arms and bat wings outspread, <as if to make victims of the revellers. From his eyes darted deep red tire, and there was a command in his satanic bearing which lot none doubt bin: as the presiding ghoul of tho occasion. MAGNIFICENT DRAOON. His vis-!i-vis was a magnificent dragon of like proportions, tho eyebrows of which formed tho proscenium and its cavernous mouth was tho stage for tho domino-clad musicians. This dragon was in the attitude of crawling out of its den to meet tho devil, and its roportious filled up the open. Dragons never looked fiercer. Red bull's-eyes were his oculars, which wabbled around my;,Leriously like tho sand crab's. The monster's tongue lapped against its blood red palate for stage settings, and no

other colour was visible. Teeth like stalactites hung in tho arch, and pushed up from the footlights. Glints of silver 1 and green marked the scales on tho body. Both sides of this inferno were scalloped in grottoes and cliffs. Each revealed its peculiar group of revellers. In one recess there was a dance of grinning skeletons. One juggled a skull, another smoked a pipe, and a third played leap-frog with a saurian. BIG AND LITTLE GHOULS. A giant ghoul, tusked, barbed-tailed and leering, pitch-forked lesser ghouls under the shadow of a rock that in the glow of subterannean fires seemed to bleed in pity. Out of other flames in another cranny arose a serpent that fanged tho lips of a head like Dlue Beard's, which hung by long hair from the ceiling. There was a battle royal between a green-eyed icthyasaur, giant and terrible, and a pterodactyl with breath like livid lightning.

A gentlemanly crowd of ghouls with pitchforks stacked sat in a friendly game of cards. Their eyes shouo alternately green and silver. Peering from cracks and narrow overhead were wistful skeletons, which seemed contented to watch tho revelry. One could look nowhere without the eye of demon, death, or destruction leering on him. In ono corner was a monster spider's web —a transparency—with bats, scorpions, and centipedes imprisoned by the builder. In shifting lights the spider seemed to bo animated. To the right of tho Big Devil was a caldron, out of which proceeded, fire, steam, electric flashes and hisses. GRAND ENTREE. Green lights gave a weird effect to the white-robed figures of the grand entree. Tho column entered to the music of Bier wirth's orchestra, which had worked up to a frenzy of crescendo in the storm scono of Weber's " Oborou." As the column passed tho soothing caldron shot up its weird fires, vivid lightnings ran, thero was tho reverberation of thunder and earthquakes, and from out tho din wails and groans and cries of lost spirits ascended in such volume many a female domino quailed at the threshold.

But that was not the whole. Green lights shifted to red, and overy domino was in ruby tints.

Thou the storm march ended, a mellow waltz wafted through tho cavern, and the spell was over. The revellers forgot terror in tho whirl of the dance.