Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1882 — Good and Bad Table Manners. [ARTICLE]

Good and Bad Table Manners.

Some people eat instinctively with great elegance ; some never achieve elegance in these minor matters, but all should strive for it. There is no more repulsive object than a person who eats noisily, grossly, inelegantly. Dr. Johnson is remembered for his brutal way of eating almost ss much as for his great learning and genius. With him it was selfish preoccupation. Fish and fruit are eaten with silver knives and forks; or, if silver fish-knives are not provided, a piece of bread can be held in the left hand. Fish corrodes a steel knife. Never tilt a soup-plate for the last drop, or ostentatiously scrape your plate clean. A part of table manners should be the conversation. By mutual consent, every one should bring only the best that is in him to the table. There should be the greatest care taken in the family circle to talk of only agreeable topics at meals. The mutual forbearance which prompts the neat dress, the respectful bearing, tbe delicate habit of eating, the attention to table etequitte, should also make the mind put on its best dress, and the effort of any one at a meal should be to make himself or herself as agreeable as possible. No one should show any haste in being helped, any displeasure at being left until the last, it is always proper at an informal meal to ask for a second cut, to say that rare or underdone beef is more to your taste than the more cooked portions. But one never asks twice for soup or fish ; one is rarely helped twice at dessert. These dishes, also salad, are supposed to admit of but one helping.