When it comes to the purchase of course sets, different tastes can find instant gratification in numberless colorings and designs.  Overdecoration and large floral devices must be avoided, but any delicately expressed pattern is good, and here again the gold-and-white seems to fulfill all demands.  Soup, salad, tea, butter, and other plates can be had in china from 30 cents apiece up.  Articles of this kind, in a standard pattern, may be bought one or two at a time, and added to as ability permits until the set is completed.  Any unusual design runs through two years, after which it can be obtained only from the factory.  A dozen of each is a good number to aim at, for there will be many occasions which will call out one’s whole dish brigade and keep it actively engaged.  The old joke about having to wash dishes between courses, and sending the ice cream afloat on a warm plate, really loses its amusing aspect when it becomes an actual experience.  Unless the mistress prefers to serve her soup at the table, a tureen is not a necessity, but if used, it must match the soup plates.  It is a somewhat fluctuating fashion, out at present.  Soup plates are not the great flaring affairs of yore.  They either follow the old shape, much reduced, or are in the nature of a large sauce dish.  The meat set of platters, plates, and vegetable dishes comes into play at all meals, tea plates can be put to a variety of uses—­in fact, many dishes supplement one another at a saving of expense and numbers.  If one has a handsome glass bowl sufficiently large, a special salad bowl is not an essential, but a china bowl demands plates to match.  Hand-painted china, in sets or odd pieces, is pretty—­sometimes—­if artistically designed and perfectly executed, but a little goes a long way.  Don’t be the innocent victim of some well-meaning relative with the china-painting bee.  Gently but firmly refuse to sacrifice the beauty of your table to family ties; they ought to be able to stand the strain, but your table cannot.

ODD PIECES

Japanese and Chinese ware is steadily gaining in favor—­another instance in which imitation is permissible, for the “real thing” is undoubtedly costly.  The quaint conceits in creams and sugars, chocolate pots, bonbon dishes, and plates, with their storks and chrysanthemums, their almond-eyed damsels and mandarins, are always interesting.  The fad of odd cups and saucers is fast developing into a fixed fashion, and a good one, which is a particular boon to the giver of gifts on Christmas and other anniversaries when “presents endear absents.”  Pretty styles in all sizes of different French, German, and English makes can be found at 50 cents and up, with special reductions at sale times.  Larger plates, to accommodate both the slice of bread and the butter ball, have taken the place of the tiny butter plate, and should properly match the meat set.  A touch of gold with any china decoration gives it