EXTRAVAGANCE RUN MAD.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9112, 3 April 1908, Page 6

EXTRAVAGANCE RUN MAD.

AMAZING MONET SPENDING FEATS. It is a sign of the times that quite young girls think £3OO ajyear an allowance on which it is barely possible to present a decent appearance. Their mothers were passing rich on £SO a year. , ' Perhaps it is in toilet accessories, more than in any other direction, that the feminine spendthrift lets herself go. The Empress Poppaea used to keep a troop of asses to supply milk for her baths. The ultrafashionable woman of to-day does not stop at baths of milk. She daily empties whole bottles of costly essences and scents into her silver or marble bath, and pays literally any price for a new and distinctive perfume of which she can retain a monopoly. The wife of a Chicago millionaire has a small factory at work for her distilling scent from a certain variety of water-lily. It takes many tons of these lilies to make a fourounce bottle of the perfume, which is valued at the incredible sum of £25 a drop. It recently occurred to an American money-king, Stephen S. Marchend by name, to distinguish himself from other men by the possession of the most beautiful bedchamber-—it would be profanity to call it. bedroom—in the world. So in his new house he had a first class room constructed, elliptical in shape, 76 feet long and 33 feet wide. The walls he had panelled with costly carved wood at the trifling cost of £13,800. The panels were hung with purple and gold Genoese velvet at £1 15s a yard. There are twenty-eight panels, and for each, ten yards of velvet were used. To adorn the ceilings special artists were brought from Paris, and these decorations nearly cost £4OOO. The chairs are of solid carved ivory, with ebony and gold inlay, the chimney-piece cost £1230; the washstand, £710; one cheval-glass, £730; and other furniture in proportion. But the crowning glory of this amazing apartment is the bed. This, like the chairs, is of ivory and ebony, marvellously carved; and it is said that in order to procure a tusk large enough to form its head a special expedition was sent to Africa at a cost of £4OOO. The carving employed the time of four skilled artists for two years, and the bill for the bed alone reached a total of £38,000. The completed room represents an outlay of £193,700 or, say, an income of about £IO,OOO a year.—Chamber’s Journal.