Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1882 — GOOD MANNERS. [ARTICLE]

GOOD MANNERS.

Gentlemen do not wear gloves at dinner parties. The finger-nails should never be cut or cleaned in public. For a gentleman’s party the name of host alone appears on the card of invitation. If wax tapers are used at a dinner party there should be as many lights as guests. The custom of removing the glove before shaking hands is no longer obligatory. Make you leave-taking short, and do not dally, but depart gracefully and politely. On gentlemen’s visiting cards the prefix “Mr.” is declared to be in bad taste, akin to snobbery. Special marks of kindness and attention should be received with discretion, for it is far better to refuse them than in accepting to assume privileges which are never intended. It is not now considered correct to introduce visitors who are calling at the same time, and considerate visitors will obviate any awkwardness by taking their departure immediately upon the arrival of a stranger. When at a dinner party a gentleman is introduced to the lady whom he is to take in to dinner, he should converse with her until dinner is announced, when he should offer her his right arm and conduct her to the dining room. Soup should be served with large spoons and never with dessert spoons, and there is good reason for this etiquette of spoons. Soup is nothing if not hot, and, as it is the custom to give but a very small helping of soup—about half a ladleful to each person—it is eaten quicker, and therefore hotter, with a large spoon than with a small one. The way in which a man takes his soup is by many regarded as the test of his table manners—to tin the plate and to lake the soup from tLe point of the spoon are sins against the morality of the dinner table, as great as to suck down the liquid with the sound of a miniature maelstrom. The best lawgivers on the subject demand that the spoon shall be swept through the soup away from the person, and the soup drank noiselessly from the side of the spoon, which should be lightly tipped, as if it were a small cup or bowl. To be in thoroughly good form at dinner is the very inflorescence of civilized life. Like many other regulations of social life, dinner-table etiquette is arbitrary, but not to know certain things is to argue yourself unknown so far as society life goes. To take soup pushing the spoon from rather than toward yourself; to touch the napkins as little as possible; to accept or decline what is offered instantly and quietly; these and other trifles characterize the wellbred diner-out.