Grape fruit is eaten from an orange spoon.  If oysters are served raw, they must not be cut but eaten whole.

Soup must be taken from the side of the spoon, quietly, with no hissing or other sound, nor should the spoon be so full that it drips over.  The motion of the spoon in filling it, is away from instead of towards the person; and tilting the plate to secure the last spoonful is bad form.  Crackers are never served with soup:  croutons—­small squares of bread toasted very hard and brown, or small H. & P. biscuits are passed.  These are never put into the soup, but are eaten from the hand.  Neither soup nor fish should be offered the second time.

Fish is generally eaten with a fork and a bit of bread, though silver fish knives are in occasional use.  The entree which follows the fish should be eaten with the fork only.  A mouthful of meat is cut as required; it is never buried in potato or any vegetable and then conveyed to the mouth.  Vegetables are no longer served in “birds’ bath-tubs,” as some wit once called the individual vegetable dishes, but are cooked sufficiently dry to be served on the plate with the meat.  All vegetables are eaten with the fork, so also jellies, chutney, etc., served with the meat course.

Using the Fork.—­The fork laid farthest from the plate is to be used for the first course requiring such a utensil; the others are used in their order.  The knife is held in the right hand; by the handle, not the blade.  The fork should not be held like a spoon, or a shovel, but more as one would hold a pencil or pen; it is raised laterally to the mouth.  The elbow is not to be projected, or crooked outward, in using either knife or fork; that is a very awkward performance.  The fork should never be over-burdened.  The knife is never lifted to the mouth; it is said that “only members of the legislature eat pie with a knife nowadays.”  The handle of neither knife or fork may rest on the table nor the former be laid across the edge of the plate.

Tender meat, like the breast of chickens, may be cut with the fork.  A bone is never taken in the fingers, the historic anecdote about Queen Victoria to the contrary notwithstanding.  The table manners of the twentieth century are not Early Victorian.  Olives and celery are correctly laid on the bread-and-butter plate.  The former is never dipped in one’s salt cellar; a small portion of salt is put on the edge of the plate; both are eaten from the fingers.

[706 Mothers’ remedies]

Vegetables, Fruits, etc.—­Green corn is seldom served on the cob at ceremonious dinners.  If it is served, it is to be broken in medium-sized pieces and eaten from the cob, a rather messy process, and one not pretty to observe.  The fastidious avoid it.  If eaten, the piece is held between the fingers of one hand.  To take an unbroken ear in both hands and gnaw the length of it suggests the manners of an animal never named in polite society.