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There are other things, however, which are equally disagreeable; such as reaching across your neighbor for a dish or condiment, instead of asking him to pass it to you, and putting your knife into the butter-plate, or your fork into the shaved beef, or the potatoes, and taking the salt from the salt-cellar at your plate with your fingers.

 

When you send your plate to be replenished, place your knife and fork upon one side of it, or cross them upon it, or put them upon your piece of bread.

 

Never take a bit of sugar from the bowl with your fingers; but use them when you take a piece of bread, cake, and the like, also an olive, unless an olive-fork is provided.

 

Avoid the old-fashioned habit of never taking the last piece of anything which remains upon a dish, not doing this would indicate that you feared the vacancy could not be supplied.

 

If a plate be handed you at table, you should always keep it, and not offer it to your neighbor as was considered polite in "ye olden tymes."

 

Your host knows whom he desires to wait upon first, and it is a poor compliment to him to seem to reprove his selection.

 

When served, do not wait until all the others are helped, but as soon as your plate is placed before you, take up your knife and fork, help yourself to salt, first arranging your napkin to shield your attire, but not wearing it like a bib about your neck. And, of course, you will never commit the solecism of putting your knife into your mouth.

 

This last is a rule which should never be deviated from, and the almost universal custom of using four-tined forks, makes it quite as easy to eat with a fork as a knife.

 

We have heard this custom denounced as "absurd and ridiculous" -- as "similar to eating soup with a knitting-needle," or "sipping tea with a hair-pin" -- but still must mention that the taste of a steel knife is very obnoxious, no matter how high its polish, and even a silver knife is better for dividing the food into portions, than for carrying it to the mouth.

 

Most of us, unless accustomed to the niceties of good-breeding, until they have become as of second nature to us, are liable to commit some errors through ignorance of table etiquette.