It is all very well for etiquette to say “They stay there,” but every woman knows they don’t!  And this is quite a nice question:  If you obey etiquette and lay the napkin on top of the fan and gloves loosely across your satin-covered knees, it will depend merely upon the heaviness and position of the fan’s handle whether the avalanche starts right, left or forward, onto the floor.  There is just one way to keep these four articles (including the lap as one) from disintegrating, which is to put the napkin cornerwise across your knees and tuck the two side corners under like a lap robe, with the gloves and the fan tied in place as it were.  This ought not to be put in a book of etiquette, which should say you must do nothing of the kind, but it is either do that or have the gentleman next you groping under the table at the end of the meal; and it is impossible to imagine that etiquette should wish to conserve the picture of “gentlemen on all fours” as the concluding ceremonial at dinners.

=THE TURNING OF THE TABLE=

The turning of the table is accomplished by the hostess, who merely turns from the gentleman (on her left probably) with whom she has been talking through the soup and the fish course, to the one on her right.  As she turns, the lady to whom the “right” gentleman has been talking, turns to the gentleman further on, and in a moment everyone at table is talking to a new neighbor.  Sometimes a single couple who have become very much engrossed, refuse to change partners and the whole table is blocked; leaving one lady and one gentleman on either side of the block, staring alone at their plates.  At this point the hostess has to come to the rescue by attracting the blocking lady’s attention and saying, “Sally, you cannot talk to Professor Bugge any longer!  Mr. Smith has been trying his best to attract your attention.”

“Sally” being in this way brought awake, is obliged to pay attention to Mr. Smith, and Professor Bugge, little as he may feel inclined, must turn his attention to the other side.  To persist in carrying on their own conversation at the expense of others, would be inexcusably rude, not only to their hostess but to every one present.

At a dinner not long ago, Mr. Kindhart sitting next to Mrs. Wellborn and left to himself because of the assiduity of the lady’s farther partner, slid his own name-card across and in front of her, to bring her attention to the fact that it was “his turn.”

=ENEMIES MUST BURY HATCHETS=

One inexorable rule of etiquette is that you must talk to your next door neighbor at a dinner table.  You must, that is all there is about it!

Even if you are placed next to some one with whom you have had a bitter quarrel, consideration for your hostess, who would be distressed if she knew you had been put in a disagreeable place, and further consideration for the rest of the table which is otherwise “blocked,” exacts that you give no outward sign of your repugnance and that you make a pretence at least for a little while, of talking together.