=BIRDS=

Birds are not eaten with the fingers in company!  You cut off as much of the meat as you can, and leave the rest on your plate.

=FORKS OR FINGERS=

All juicy or “gooey” fruits or cakes are best eaten with a fork, but in most cases it is a matter of dexterity.  If you are able to eat a peach in your fingers and not smear your face, let juice run down, or make a sucking noise, you are the one in a thousand who may, and with utmost propriety, continue the feat.  If you can eat a napoleon or a cream puff and not let the cream ooze out on the far side, you need not use a fork, but if you can not eat something—­no matter what it is—­without getting it all over your fingers, you must use a fork, and if necessary, a knife also!

All rules of table manners are made to avoid ugliness; to let any one see what you have in your mouth is repulsive; to make a noise is to suggest an animal; to make a mess is disgusting.  On the other hand, there are a number of trifling decrees of etiquette that are merely finical, unreasonable, and silly.  Why one should not cut one’s salad in small pieces if one wants to, makes little sense, unless one wants to cut up a whole plateful and make the plate messy!  A steel knife must not be used for salad or fruit, because it turns black.  To condemn the American custom of eating a soft-boiled egg in a glass, or cup, because it happens to be the English fashion to scoop it through the ragged edge of the shell, is about as reasonable as though we were to proclaim English manners bad because they tag a breakfast dish, called a “savory” of fish-roe or something equally inappropriate, after the dessert at dinner.

Many other arbitrary rules for eating food with fork, spoon or fingers, are also stumbling-blocks rather than aids to smoothness.  As said above, one eats with a fork or spoon “finger-foods” that are messy and sticky; one eats with the finger those which are dry.  It is true that one should not eat French fried potatoes or Saratoga chips in fingers, but that is because they belong to the meat course.  Separate vegetable saucers are never put on a fashionable table, neither is butter allowed at dinner.  Therefore both must be avoided in company, because “company” is formal, and etiquette is first aid always to formality.  But if a man in his own house likes butter with his dinner or a saucer for his tomatoes, he is breaking the rule of fashion to have them, but he is scarcely committing an offense!  In the same way, if he likes to eat a chicken wing or a squab leg in his fingers he can ask for a finger-bowl.  The real objection to eating with the fingers is getting them greasy or sticky, and to suck them or smear one’s napkin is equally unsightly.

=ON THE SUBJECT OF ELBOWS=

Although elbows on the table are seen constantly in highest fashionable circles, a whole table’s length of elbows planted like clothes-line poles and hands waving glasses or forks about in between, is neither an attractive nor (fortunately) an accurate picture of a fashionable dinner table.  As a matter of fact, the tolerated elbow-on-table is used only on occasion and for a reason, and should neither be permitted to children nor practised in their presence.