But the modern manufacturers are making enchanting “sets” that are replicas of the old.  These tea sets with cups and saucers to match and with a silver kettle and tray, are seen almost as often as silver services in simple houses in the country, as well as in the small apartment in town.

=DON’TS IN TABLE SETTING!=

Don’t put ribbon trimmings on your table.  Satin bands and bows have no more place on a lady’s table than have chop-house appurtenances.  Pickle jars, catsup bottles, toothpicks and crackers are not private-house table ornaments.  Crackers are passed with oyster stew and with salad, and any one who wants “relishes” can have them in his own house (though they insult the cook!).  At all events, pickles and tomato sauces and other cold meat condiments are never presented at table in a bottle, but are put in glass dishes with small serving spoons.  Nothing is ever served from the jar or bottle it comes in except certain kinds of cheese, Bar-le-Duc preserves (only sometimes) and wines.  Pickles, jellies, jams, olives, are all put into small glass dishes.

Saucers for vegetables are contrary to all etiquette.  The only extra plates ever permitted are the bread and butter plates which are put on at breakfast and lunch and supper above and to the left of the forks, but never at dinner.  The crescent-shaped salad plate, made to fit at the side of the place plate, is seen rarely in fashionable houses.  When two plates are made necessary by the serving of game or broiled chicken or squab, for which the plate should be very hot, at the same time as the salad which is cold, the crescent-shaped plate is convenient in that it takes little room.

A correct and very good serving dish for a family of two, is the vegetable dish that has a partition dividing it into two or even three divisions, so that a small quantity of two or three vegetables can be passed at the same time.

Napkin rings are unknown in fashionable houses outside of the nursery.  But in large families where it is impossible to manage such a wash as three clean napkins a day entail, napkin rings are probably necessary.  In most moderately run houses, a napkin that is unrumpled and spotless after a meal, is put aside and used again for breakfast; but to be given a napkin that is not perfectly clean is a horrid thought.  Perhaps though, the necessity for napkin rings results in the achievement of the immaculate napkin—­which is quite a nice thought.

=CORRECT SERVICE OF DINNER=

Whether there are two at table or two hundred, plates are changed and courses presented in precisely the same manner.

For faultless service, if there are many “accompanied” dishes, two servants are necessary to wait on as few as two persons.  But two can also efficiently serve eight; or with unaccompanied dishes an expert servant can manage eight alone, and with one assistant, he can perfectly manage twelve.