It is correct to take up asparagus by the stalk, and eat it from the fingers, but the newer and more desirable custom is to cut off the edible portion with knife and fork.  Lettuce is never cut with a knife; a fork is used, the piece rolled up and conveyed to the mouth.

Hard cheese may be eaten from the fingers; soft cheeses, like Neufchatel, Brie, and the like, are eaten with the fork, or a bit is spread on a morsel of bread and conveyed to the mouth with the fingers.

A soft cake is eaten with a fork.  The rule is that whatever can be eaten with a fork shall be so eaten.

Roman punch and sherbets require a spoon.  Berries, peaches and cream, custards, preserves, jellies, call for the spoon.  Strawberries are often served as a first course in their season.  They are then arranged with their hulls and a portion of stem left on, dipped in powdered sugar and eaten from the fingers.  A little mound of the sugar is pressed into shape in the center of the small plate and the berries laid around it.

Peaches, pears, and apples are peeled with the fruit knife, cut in quarters or eighths, and eaten from the fingers.  Bananas are stripped of the skin, cut in pieces with a fork and eaten from it.  Oranges are cut in two across the sections and eaten with an orange spoon.  Plums, like olives, are eaten by biting off the pulp without taking the stone in the mouth.  Pineapple, unless shredded or cut up, requires both knife and fork; it is usually prepared for more convenient eating.  Grapes, which should be washed by letting water from the faucet run over them and laid on a folded towel until the moisture drips off, are eaten from behind the half-closed hand, which receives the skins and seeds, then to be deposited on the plate.

If the small cup of coffee—­the demi-tasse—­is served, the small after-dinner coffee spoon is necessary.  Cream is seldom served with the black coffee—­cafe noir—­with which a meal concludes, cut loaf sugar is passed.

The Spoon.—­The spoon must never be left in the cup, no matter what beverage is served.  Most of us have seen some absent-minded individual (we will charitably suppose him absent-minded instead of ignorant), stir his coffee round and round and round, creating a miniature whirlpool and very likely slopping it over into the saucer; then, prisoning the spoon with a finger, drink half the cup’s contents at a gulp.  To do this is positively vulgar.  Stir the coffee or tea very slightly, just enough to stir the cream and sugar with it, then drink in sips.  To take either from the teaspoon is bad form.  Bread is broken, not cut, and only a small portion buttered at a time.  Do not play with bread crumbs or spoon, etc., during the progress of a meal.  Leave knife and fork on the plate, handles side by side, when it is passed for a second helping, and at a conclusion of a course, or the meal, lay them in the same position, points of the fork upward.