ble or
handed around by a servant. Do not place a quantity of small vegetable
dishes at each plate; it is too suggestive of hotel and restaurant
life; peas and some other similarly cooked vegetables are an exception
to this rule. Side dishes, such as pickles, etc., are placed on the
table when it is first laid.

If a salad is to form the next course, all the dishes should be
carried out, the meat being taken first, then the dishes of
vegetables, after that, plates and butter plates. A tray is much
better to transfer all articles except large platters. Never permit a
maid to scrape the contents of one plate into another, with a clatter
of knives and forks, and then triumphantly bear off the entire pile at
once. The salad is to be eaten with a silver fork, and is served with
rolls or biscuit. Where the home dinner is simple the salad is
frequently served in small dishes and passed during the progress of
the repast.

Before dessert is brought on, all table furniture should be removed
save glasses and water bottle, and the cloth brushed free from crumbs
with crumb-tray and napkin, or scraper, in preference to a brush,
which is apt to soil the cloth. The dessert is then to be placed on
the table and the mistress serves the pastry or pudding on small
plates or saucers which are placed before her. Tea, coffee, or
chocolate, may now be handed around, but never sooner. At a very
ceremonious dinner they appear last of all.

If fruit is to follow the pastry, fruit plates, arranged as for
breakfast, must be substituted for the dessert plates, as soon as the
guests are done with these.

It is to be expected that each family will adapt the above outline to
suit their own needs, omitting such features as they have neither time
to devote to nor servants to accomplish. The ideas here given,
however, are suitable as the nucleus of the most elaborate dinner, or
may be simplified to fit the plainest repast.

The Supper Table.

The table for supper is laid very much after the general plan given
for breakfast, with the exception of the oatmeal. If the tea is made
at the table, which is the daintiest way, the other adjuncts of the
tray must be supplemented by a dainty brass or bronze hot-water kettle
swung over an alcohol lamp, and a pretty tea caddy. Lovely silver
caddies, with lock and key, are to be had and make an appropriate
wedding gift. A "cosy" or thick wadded cap for setting over the
teapot, to keep the heat in, is another