of the finest and sheerest needlework that can be
found (or afforded). It must always be cream or white. Colored
embroideries look well sometimes on a country lunch table but not at
dinner. No matter where it is used, the finger bowl is less than half
filled with cold water; and at dinner parties, a few violets, sweet peas,
or occasionally a gardenia, is put in it. (A slice of lemon is never seen
outside of a chop-house where eating with the fingers may necessitate the
lemon in removing grease. Pretty thought!)

Black coffee is never served at a fashionable dinner table, but is brought
afterwards with cigarettes and liqueurs into the drawing-room for the
ladies, and with cigars, cigarettes and liqueurs into the smoking room for
the gentlemen.

If there is no smoking-room, coffee and cigars are brought to the table
for the gentlemen after the ladies have gone into the drawing-room.

=PLACE CARDS=

The place cards are usually about an inch and a half high by two inches
long, sometimes slightly larger. People of old family have their crest
embossed in plain white; occasionally an elderly hostess, following a
lifelong custom, has her husband's crest stamped in gold. Nothing other
than a crest must ever be engraved on a place card; and usually they are
plain, even in the houses of old families.

Years ago "hand-painted" place cards are said to have been in fashion. But
excepting on such occasions as a Christmas or a birthday dinner, they are
never seen in private houses to-day.

=MENU CARDS=

Small, standing porcelain slates, on which the menu is written, are seen
on occasional dinner tables. Most often there is only one which is placed
in front of the host; but sometimes there is one between every two guests.

=SEATING THE TABLE=

As has already been observed, the most practical way to seat the table is
to write the names on individual cards first, and then "place" them as
though playing solitaire; the guest of honor on the host's right, the
second lady in rank on his left; the most distinguished or oldest
gentleman on the right of the hostess, and the other guests filled in
between.

=WHO IS THE GUEST OF HONOR?=

The guest of honor is the oldest lady present, or a stranger whom you wish
for some reason to honor. A bride at her first dinner in your house, after
her return from her honeymoon, takes, if you choose to have her,
precedence over older people. Or if a younger woman has been long away
she, in