rather than aids to smoothness. As said above,
one eats with a fork or spoon "finger-foods" that are messy and sticky;
one eats with the finger those which are dry. It is true that one should
not eat French fried potatoes or Saratoga chips in fingers, but that is
because they belong to the meat course. Separate vegetable saucers are
never put on a fashionable table, neither is butter allowed at dinner.
Therefore both must be avoided in company, because "company" is formal,
and etiquette is first aid always to formality. But if a man in his own
house likes butter with his dinner or a saucer for his tomatoes, he is
breaking the rule of fashion to have them, but he is scarcely committing
an offense! In the same way, if he likes to eat a chicken wing or a squab
leg in his fingers he can ask for a finger-bowl. The real objection to
eating with the fingers is getting them greasy or sticky, and to suck them
or smear one's napkin is equally unsightly.

=ON THE SUBJECT OF ELBOWS=

Although elbows on the table are seen constantly in highest fashionable
circles, a whole table's length of elbows planted like clothes-line poles
and hands waving glasses or forks about in between, is neither an
attractive nor (fortunately) an accurate picture of a fashionable dinner
table. As a matter of fact, the tolerated elbow-on-table is used only on
occasion and for a reason, and should neither be permitted to children nor
practised in their presence.

Elbows are universally seen on tables in restaurants, especially when
people are lunching or dining at a small table of two or four, and it is
impossible to make oneself heard above the music by one's table
companions, and at the same time not be heard at other tables nearby,
without leaning far forward. And in leaning forward, a woman's figure
makes a more graceful outline supported on her elbows than doubled forward
over her hands in her lap as though in pain! At home, when there is no
reason for leaning across the table, there is no reason for elbows. And
at a dinner of ceremony, elbows on the table are rarely seen, except at
the ends of the table, where again one has to lean forward in order to
talk to a companion at a distance across the table corner.

Elbows are _never_ put on the table while one is eating. To sit with the
left elbow propped on the table while eating with the right hand (unless
one is alone and ill), or to prop the right one on the table while lifting
the fork or glass t