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Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2020, 4 March 1907, Page 3

We were told in the cable messages of the “freak dinner” given by Mrs. Minnie Fiske Griffen to lier millionaire friends and tlieir pets in Chicago. Ten of them brought prize pigs daintily decorated with ribbons. The pigs, which, says a facetious reporter,' belonged to the four-footed species and were of unimpeachable ancestry, were seated beside the human guests at a gorgeous banqueting table, and were regaled with asparagus-tips and Brussels sprouts with Lyonnaise dressing. Other guests were a game cock of high degree, whoso occasional remarks were loudly applauded, a pink-eyed rabbit with a powder puff for a tail, a pouter pigeon, a poll parrot, a chameleon, which was fed with bottled flies from Florida, a Boston terrier, a sqii'irrel and "an Angora cat. Tins was by no means the only _novel entertainment reported by the American newspapers at the New Year. One of the merriest parties was that organised by Mark Twain' ill New York. The humorist, who was tied securely to a small person in the garb of Satan, explained that the little bad man who was represented on one side was his double personality, who had haunted him all his life. When lie was Mark Twain, his original self, he was proper company for anybody; but when the other part of him got the upper hand there was no accounting for what might happen, A§ Mark Twain thus talked his Satanic half took a sly nip at a small bottle. Mr. Clements detected the act, and remarked that this was the sort of deception he had to contend against since a child. He had made all sorts of resolutions for the New Year, but was plagued with the fear that the Other Jittle nian would break them. New Ybar-s Eve iii New York was essentially a night, of freaks, we are told. Broadway for the length of twenty streets was jammed with a yelling mol). The great hotels and restaurants wore packed with guests, many of-whom paid as much as £3O for a table. More than seven thousand guests supped at the Waldorf Hotel, where, as in the other hotels, champagne was the only beverage served.