The informal dinner, or the family dinner with the addition of two or more guests, should be served almost like the formal dinner by the hostess having several servants. The few exceptions are that the soap may be served by the hostess from a tureen on the table, the assistant taking one soup-plate at a time from the sideboard, placing it in front of the hostess, then when filled placing it on the service-plate of each guest from the right. Fish may be served by the host, and passed in the same manner as the soup. Large platters should always be used when carving is done at the table; if this is not convenient, then a carving-napkin may be on the table in front of the host from the beginning, to be left on until the table is cleared for dessert. Entrees are always served from the side, and the roast is carved by the host. All vegetables and sauces are placed on the side-table and passed to the left of each guest when required. The host or hostess makes the salad, and the hostess serves the dessert and pours out the coffee. Coffee should be placed at the lower right hand of the guest, and cream and sugar passed to the left. The bonbons and relishes may be upon the table and the number of courses should be less than for a formal dinner. Really this is the dinner that should be served every day by the ambitious house-keeper, no change being necessary for an extra guest or two. The service of wine is entirely a matter of choice or opinion. Both formal and informal dinners are in equally good taste without wine as with it. As very few persons are able to partake of every dish that is offered them, the same may be said of wine. Experienced diners will always refuse any thing that is to them especially injurious, and are expected to do so, but it is bad form to parade one's objections; a quiet refusal by a glance or a motion is all that is necessary.

The suggestions given thus far are for house-keepers with more than one servant. Realizing that there are many would-be hostesses who are fortunate enough to be able to run the domestic machine with one maid-of-all-work, the following suggestions are for their benefit:

The table should be set as for the informal dinner, but it is well to remember that there is only one pair of hands to do both cooking and serving. The service-plate should be omitted, all the knives and forks to be used may be put on the table, salts and peppers at the corners of the table, or one of each for every two persons. Small round plates for the butter-ball and slice of bread or dinner-roll which should be put on before dinner is announced, are placed at the left of each cover, and the small butter-knife, if one is used, placed on the plate with the bread. Goblets should be filled with iced water, and everything needed should be on the side table before guests are seated. Decanters, bonbons, and relishes may all be on the table from the beginning. The plates for each course served on the table should be placed in a low pile, not more than three or four at a time, in front of the host or hostess, the maid taking each one as it is filled, putting it on her tray and placing it in front of each guest from the right with the right hand.

Further suggestions will be given with each course, but the writer would advise an ambitions housekeeper, who wishes to understand thoroughly all of the details of the business of house-keeping, to secure some of the books making a specialty of each subject and to study them. A particularly good one is "The National Cook Book," by Marion Harland and Christine Terhune Herrick.

This work is only an attempt to awaken the average house-keeper to the fact that she can serve her family and entertain her friends without drudgery and without extravagance. It only requires brain, good taste, and tact to make the home a veritable Garden of Eden, only our modern Eve sautes or souffles the apple before she gives it to Adam. It was undoubtedly a fit of indigestion from eating raw food which caused the first Adam to "peach."