embellishments only.
Rings around food are nearly always to be eaten; platforms under food
seldom, if ever, are. Anything that looks like pastry is to be eaten; and
anything divided into separate units should be taken on your plate
complete. You should not try to cut a section from anything that has
already been divided into portions in the kitchen. Aspics and desserts
are, it must be said, occasionally Chinese puzzles, but if you do help
yourself to part of the decoration, no great harm is done.

Dishes are _never_ passed from hand to hand at a dinner, not even at the
smallest and most informal one. Sometimes people pass salted nuts to each
other, or an extra sweet from a dish near by, but not circling the table.

=LEAVING THE TABLE=

At the end of dinner, when the last dish of chocolates has been passed and
the hostess sees that no one is any longer eating, she looks across the
table, and catching the eye of one of the ladies, slowly stands up. The
one who happens to be observing also stands up, and in a moment everyone
is standing. The gentlemen offer their arms to their partners and conduct
them back to the drawing-room or the library or wherever they are to sit
during the rest of the evening.

Each gentleman then slightly bows, takes leave of his partner, and
adjourns with the other gentlemen to the smoking-room, where after-dinner
coffee, liqueurs, cigars and cigarettes are passed, and they all sit where
they like and with whom they like, and talk.

It is perfectly correct for a gentleman to talk to any other who happens
to be sitting near him, whether he knows him or not. The host on
occasions--but it is rarely necessary--starts the conversation if most of
the guests are inclined to keep silent, by drawing this one or that into
discussion of a general topic that everyone is likely to take part in. At
the end of twenty minutes or so, he must take the opportunity of the first
lull in the conversation to suggest that they join the ladies in the
drawing-room.

In a house where there is no smoking-room, the gentlemen do not conduct
the ladies to the drawing-room, but stay where they are (the ladies
leaving alone) and have their coffee, cigars, liqueurs and conversation
sitting around the table.

In the drawing-room, meanwhile, the ladies are having coffee, cigarettes,
and liqueurs passed to them. There is not a modern New York hostess,
scarcely even an old-fashioned one, who does not have cigarettes passed
a