At luncheon, breakfast, high tea or supper a small plate and silver knife lie beside the larger plate and on this the breads offered must be laid - not on the cloth - and the small silver knife - not the large, steel-bladed ones - used for spreading the butter. At dinners the roll in the napkin is taken out and laid on the cloth at the right beside the plate. Never bite off mouthfuls of bread from a large piece nor cut it up. Break it as needed in pieces the size of a mouthful, spread on a bit of butter, if that is provided, and so transfer with the fingers to the mouth.

Crackers are eaten in the same way. Celery, radishes, olives, pickles, salted nuts, crystallized fruits, bon bons and raw fruits (save berries, melons and grapefruit), artichokes and corn on the cob are all eaten with the fingers.

Cake is eaten like bread, or with a fork.

Peaches are quartered, the quarters peeled, then cut in mouthfuls and these bits transferred with the fingers to the lips. Apples, pears and nectarines are similarly treated. Plums, apricots, grapes, etc., if small enough, are eaten one by one and when the pits are ejected they are dropped from the lips directly into the half-closed hand and so transferred to the plate.

Burr artichokes are broken apart, leaf by leaf, the tips dipped in sauce and lifted to the mouth. The heart is cut and eaten with a fork.

Cheese is cut in bits, sometimes placed on morsels of bread or biscuit and lifted in the fingers to the lips, but more often eaten with a fork.

Oranges, like green corn on the cob, are hardly susceptible of graceful treatment unless served in halves and eaten with a spoon. An orange may be cut into four pieces, the skin then easily drawn off, the seeds pressed out, and each quarter severed twice, forms a suitable mouthful. Deliberately to peel and devour an orange, slice by slice, is a prolonged and ungraceful performance.

Is it necessary to reiterate the warnings of most all writers on etiquette that chicken, game and chop bones may under no circumstances be taken up with the fingers?

Whoever is so unskilled as to fail to cut the larger part of the meat from chop and fowl bones must suffer from their inadeptness and forego the enjoyment of these tempting morsels.

Asparagus is not taken up in the fingers. All that is edible of the stalk can easily be cut from it with a fork. The sight of lengths of this vegetable dripping with sauce and hoisted to drop into the open mouth is not in keeping with decent behavior at the modern dinner table.

The Second Helping At a large and formal dinner party, elaborate luncheon or ceremonious breakfast, a guest, no matter how intimately associated with the host or hostess, should not ask for a second helping of any of the dishes. At a small dinner party, when a guest is a rather intimate friend of host or hostess, the request for a second helping to a dish is accepted by the hostess as a compliment. At a formal dinner neither the host nor hostess should delay the progress of the courses by asking anyone to taste again of a dish that has been passed, but at a small dinner or a family dinner it displays a hospitable solicitude when a hostess invites her guests to take a second helping. At a small dinner party she could do this by directing the servant to pass the dish again to everyone at table, or, when herself helping an entree, salad or dessert, requesting her guests to accept a second serving of the dish before her. The host who carves does well to offer a little more of the meat to those who he sees have disposed of their first helping. To press a second slice of meat or second spoonful of dessert upon a guest who has politely refused is to exceed the bounds of civility.

A guest is always privileged to ask for a second or third glass of water at a dinner that is formal or informal. This must be done by making the request quietly of the servant when next she approaches the diner's chair.