ther
"family" dessert. Or broiled chicken, chicken croquettes, or an aspic, is
served with the salad in very hot weather. While cold food is both
appropriate and palatable, no meal should ever be chosen without at least
one course of hot food. Many people dislike cold food, and it disagrees
with others, but if you offer your guests soup, or even tea or chocolate,
it would then do to have the rest of the meal cold.

=LUNCHEON BEVERAGES=

It is an American custom--especially in communities where the five o'clock
tea habit is neither so strong nor so universal as in New York, for the
lady of a house to have the tea set put before her at the table, not only
when alone, but when having friends lunching informally with her, and to
pour tea, coffee, or chocolate. And there is certainly not the slightest
reason why, if she is used to these beverages and would feel their
omission, she should not "pour out" what she chooses. In fact, although
tea is never served hot at formal New York luncheons, iced tea is
customary in all country houses in summer; and chocolate, not poured by
the hostess, but brought in from the pantry and put down at the right of
each plate, is by no means unusual at informal lunch parties.

Iced tea at lunch in summer is poured at the table by a servant from a
glass pitcher, and is prepared like a "cup" with lemon and sugar, and
sometimes with cut up fresh fruit and a little squeezed fruit juice. Plain
cold tea may be passed in glasses, and lemon and sugar separately. At an
informal luncheon, cold coffee, instead of tea, is passed around in a
glass pitcher, on a tray that also holds a bowl of powdered sugar and a
pitcher of cold milk, and another of as thick as possible cream. The
guests pour their coffee to suit themselves into tall glasses half full of
broken ice, and furnished with very long-handled spoons.

If tea or coffee or chocolate are not served during the meal, there is
always a cup of some sort: grape or orange juice (in these days) with
sugar and mint leaves, and ginger ale or carbonic water.

If dessert is a hot pudding or pastry, the "hotel service" of dessert
plates should be used. The glass plate is particularly suitable for ice
cream or any cold dessert, but is apt to crack if intensely hot food is
put on it.

=DETAILS OF ETIQUETTE AT LUNCHEONS=

Gentlemen leave their coats, hats, sticks, in the hall; ladies leave heavy
outer wraps in the hall, or dressing-room, but always go into