SOCIETY REVELS IN NEW YORK

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 10976, 16 June 1903, Page 6

SOCIETY REVELS IN NEW YORK

Some Strange Antics. Curious stories are told pf the efforts of the elite of New York — the "four hundred" as in the inmost circle is called — to kill time and keep each other amused. Too exclusive to mix with other people, too lazy to work as their fathers did, they are thrown, upon their own resources for amusement, and the result, if the stories told about them are to be believed, is a pitiful exhibition of inanity and vulgar extravagance. . • ThVTelldw Press, ever .on the look-out for -a sensation, encourages the absurdities - of the smart set, and creates amongst the latter a hunger for publicity which developes into a kind of mental disease. ( Thus, when a society lady paddled' with j bare feet in a public fountain in New j York, she was written about and photographed to such an extent that others' of the smart set hastened to follow her example, in various senseless escapades. A Lontloh paper describes a bachelor supper given, by a Californian millionaire on theteve of his marriage. "His guests assist him at the close of the feast to destroy> thousands' of pounds worth of furniture and bric-a-brac, to show their contempt for money. Carpets are ripped up, costly plate-glass mirrors shattered, chandeliers pulled out by the roots, and broken china strewed ankle deep on the dining-room floor. The man. who destroys the moßt furniture is considered the finest fellow." But the exploits of Mr Harry Lehr, the Beau Brummel of New York Society, , represent? the Very highest developments of social culture. Returning from Newport to New York after the recent VanderbiltNeilson wedding, Mr Lehr was "loudly applauded for capering about the- deck on all. fours, barking like a dog, and /drenching a t number of persons with water from a fire-hose. When he climbed up a stanchion like a motfkey, a well-known beauty declared that she could positively not tftand it;' Mr' Lehr was just too Wiling!" Another of Mr Lehr's recent achievements was to dress an ape in fashionable clothes, and train it to eat with a knife and fork, and to drink champagne. Then he gave a dinner party. "The* monkey "was the guest of honour, and aya v number of other gentlemen of Mr Lehr's se.t were also present. The monkey expressed his opinion of the other diners by gettijijr drunk immediately, and weeping bitterly .witk Ha head on a serviette." Dinners' affQrd great scope for the decadent imagination of the smart set. One lady gave an "appendicitis" dinner, to which. we*e invited only those person who had suffered the disease. Surgical~Knfv'es~ wef e used, and, the table decorations were in keeping with the gruesome character of the feast. At the "tramp dinner,!' a popular form of entertainment, the guests appear in rags, and the waiters as Salvation Army officers, distributing hymn books with the food. One New York lady created the desired sensation at her dinner party by having all ■. the ; guests arrested and carried off to the police ' station, the men dazed, the women -'"they were searched and locked up. Then appeared the Tammany chieftain whose wife had, given the din-ner,-and ordered their release. It was merely a pleasant little diversion, and the guests rode back to the Fifth Avenue mansion in cabs, convinced that they had had a glorious time."