SOME STUDIES OF COLOR IN FAMILY DINNERS

A green and white dinner

In the springtime you will have no difficulty in finding pale green leaves or delicate ferns with which to grace your table. Blossoms, such as the snow-drop, or the white wood-anemone, may be surrounded by fragile ferns and serve as a dainty floral piece for the middle of the table. Pear blossoms, with their bright green leaves, will form an attractive mass of flowers and foliage. If you have a center-piece and doilies embroidered with green silk, make use of them for this family dinner. If you do not possess such, your plain damask will be entirely in keeping. Your menu may be as follows:

Cream of Spinach Soup
Lamb Chops
Mashed Potatoes, Green Peas
Lettuce Salad
Cocoanut and Citron Layer Cake
Crackers and Sage Cheese
Coffee

A pink dinner

(For Friday.)

The month of June is the time of all the year for a pink dinner, for then the table may be decked with a profusion of pink roses that will delight the heart of the flower-lover. Set a huge bowl of these upon a white, or pink-and-white center-piece, dropping a bud or half-blown rose here and there upon the table-cloth. Have your lights softened by pink shades, and use as much white, or pink-and-white china as you have at your command.

Have the following menu:

Cream of Beet Soup
Boiled Salmon
Potatoes Fried Whole, Tomato Soufflé
Beet and Celery Salad
Strawberry Sponge
Pink-and-White Cake
Crackers and Cheese
Coffee

A brown dinner

Need not be a somber array if you will give it in autumn, and study the countless shades of golden-brown, olive-brown, redbrown, greenish-brown, and even the purple-brown of the oak—exquisite and indescribable—which field, forest and fen offer to one who has the true artist’s love for color. Decorate your table and the room with autumn leaves, keeping the color scheme in mind all the time. Have brown nuts, and chocolate, and coffee bonbons, and if there be no brown china upon your shelves, see to it that there are no discordant hues.

Bean Soup
Braised Beef
Boiled Potatoes—browned
Baked Onions Scalloped Tomatoes
Salad of “Mignonette” Lettuce
Chocolate Pudding
Coffee Graham Crackers Camembert Cheese

A yellow dinner

Cream of Cheese Soup
Boiled Fowls with Egg Sauce
Stewed Carrots Yellow Turnips
Buttered Rice
Macedoine Salad
French Tapioca Custard
American Cheese Egg Crackers
Café au Lait

Goldenrod, if in the autumn; daffodils in the early spring; coreopsis in summer, for decorations.