If you should happen to be blessed with those rely nuisances, children, and should be entertaining company, never allow them to be brought in after dinner, unless they are particularly asked for, and even then it is better to say they are at school.  Some persons, with the intention of paying their court to the father, express great desire to see the sons; but they should have some mercy upon the rest of the party, particularly as they know that they themselves would be the most disturbed of all, if their urgent entreaty was granted.

Never at any time, whether at a formal or a familiar dinner party, commit the impropriety of talking to a servant:  nor ever address any remark about one of them to one of the party.  Nothing can be more ill-bred.  You merely ask for what you want in a grave and civil tone, and wait with patience till your order is obeyed.

It is a piece of refined coarseness to employ the fingers instead of the fork to effect certain operations at the dinner table, and on some other similar occasions.  To know how and when to follow the fashion of Eden, and when that of more civilized life, is one of the many points which distinguish a gentleman from one not a gentleman; or rather, in this case, which shows the difference between a man of the world, and one who has not “the tune of the time."* Cardinal Richelieu detected an adventurer who passed himself off for a nobleman, by his helping himself to olives with a fork.  He might have applied the test to a vast many other things.  Yet, on the other hand, a gentleman would lose his reputation, if he were to take up a piece of sugar with his fingers and not with the sugar-tongs.

* Shakspeare

It is of course needless to say that your own knife should never be brought near to the butter, or salt, or to a dish of any kind.  If, however, a gentleman should send his plate for anything near you, and a knife cannot be obtained immediately, you may skillfully avoid all censure by using his knife to procure it.

When you send your plate for anything, you leave your knife and fork upon it, crossed.  When you have done, you lay both in parallel lines on one side.  A render who occupies himself about greater matters, may smile at this precept.  It may, indeed, be very absurd, yet such is the tyranny of custom, that if you were to cross your knife and fork when you have finished, the most reasonable and strong-minded man at the table could not help setting you down, in his own mind, as a low-bred person. Magis sequor quam probo.

The chief matter of consideration at the dinner table, as indeed everywhere else in the life of a gentleman, is to be perfectly composed and at his ease.  He speaks deliberately, he performs the most important act of the day as if he were performing the most ordinary.  Yet there is no appearance of trifling or want of gravity in his manner; he maintains the dignity which is becoming on so vital an occasion.  He performs all the ceremonies, yet in the style of one who performs no ceremony at all.  He goes through all the complicated duties of the scene, as if he were “to the manner born.”