ople have plates and
set tables everywhere now,--in this country, I mean."

"Yes, but can't you imagine a time when to have a bowl or a saucer to
yourself was considered finical and 'stuck up,' and when some rough
Frank or Gaul from the mountains looked on disapprovingly, and said that
the world was coming to a pretty pass if such daintiness was to be
allowed? A bowl to one's self was etiquette then. All sorts of things
which to us seem matter of course and commonplace, began by being
novelties and subjects for discussion and wonderment. Remember that tea,
potatoes, carpets, tobacco, matches, almost all our modern conveniences,
were quite unknown even so lately as four or five hundred years ago. As
the world grew richer, people went on growing more refined. The richest
folks tried to make their houses more beautiful than the houses of their
neighbors. They gave splendid feasts, and hired sculptors and artists
to invent decorations for their tables, and all kinds of little elegant
usages sprang up which have gradually become the custom of our own day,
even among people who are not rich and do not give feasts."

"But do they mean anything? Are they of any real use?" persisted Cannie.

"I confess that some of them do not seem to mean a great deal. Still, if
we look closely, I think we shall find that almost every one had its
origin in one of two causes,--either it was a help to personal
convenience, or in some way it made people more agreeable or less
disagreeable to their neighbors. We have to study, and to guess a little
sometimes, to make out just why it has become customary to do this or
that, for the original reason has been forgotten or perhaps does not
exist any longer, while the custom remains."

"I wonder," said Cannie, whose mind was still running on her own
mishaps, "why people mustn't cut fish with a steel knife. I read in a
book once that it was not genteel to do so, and I couldn't think why.
And then to-night I didn't see the little silver one--"

"I imagine that in the first instance some old _gourmet_ discovered or
fancied that a steel knife gave a taste to fish which injured it. So
people gave up using knives, and it grew to be said that it was vulgar
and a mark of ignorance to cut fish with them. Then, later, it was found
not to be quite comfortable always to tear your bit of fish apart with a
fork and hold it down with a piece of bread while you did so, and the
custom arose of having a silver knife t