-crossed.

Bread was always rolled in the napkin (and usually fell on the floor) and
the oysters were occasionally found already placed on the table when the
guests came in to dinner! Loading a table to the utmost of its capacity
with useless implements which only in rarest instances had the least
value, would seem to prove that quantity without quality must have been
thought evidence of elegance and generous hospitality! And the astounding
part of the bad taste epidemic was that few if any escaped. Even those who
had inherited colonial silver and glass and china of consummate beauty,
sent it dust-gathering to the attic and cluttered their tables with stuffy
and spurious lumber.

But to-day the classic has come into its own again! As though recovering
from an illness, good taste is again demanding severe beauty of form and
line, and banishing everything that is useless or superfluous. During the
last twenty years most of us have sent an army of lumpy dishes to the
melting-pot, and junky ornaments to the ash heap along with plush table
covers, upholstered mantel-boards and fern dishes! To-day we are going
almost to the extreme of bareness, and putting nothing on our tables not
actually needed for use.

=THE DINING-ROOM=

It is scarcely necessary to point out that the bigger and more ambitious
the house, the more perfect its appointments must be. If your house has a
great Georgian dining-room, the table should be set with Georgian or an
_earlier_ period English silver. Furthermore, in a "great" dining-room,
all the silver should be real! "Real" meaning nothing so trifling as
"sterling," but genuine and important "period" pieces made by Eighteenth
Century silversmiths, such as de Lamerie or Crespell or Buck or Robertson,
or perhaps one of their predecessors. Or if, like Mrs. Oldname, you live
in an old Colonial house, you are perhaps also lucky enough to have
inherited some genuine American pieces made by Daniel Rogers or Paul
Revere! Or if you are an ardent admirer of Early Italian architecture and
have built yourself a Fifteenth Century stone-floored and frescoed or
tapestry-hung dining room, you must set your long refectory table with a
"runner" of old hand-linen and altar embroidery, or perhaps Thirteenth
Century damask and great cisterns or ewers and beakers in high-relief
silver and gold; or in Callazzioli or majolica, with great bowls of fruit
and church candlesticks of gilt, and even follow as far as is practi