Hotel Dinner.
When eating fish, remove the bones carefully, and lay them on the edge of your plate. Then, with the fork in your right hand (the concave or hollow side held uppermost), and a small piece of bread in your left, take up the flakes of fish. Servants, and all other persons, should be taught that the butter-sauce should not be poured over the fish, but put on one side of the plate, that the eater may use it profusely or sparingly, according to taste, and be able to mix it conveniently with the sauce from the fish-castors. Pouring butter-sauce over anything is now ungenteel.
It is an affectation of ultra-fashion to eat pie with a fork, and has a very awkward and inconvenient look. Cut it up with your knife and fork, then proceed to eat it with the fork in your right hand.
Much of this determined fork-exercise may be considered foolish; but it is fashionable.
It is, however, customary in eating sweet potatoes of a large size to break them in two, and, taking a piece in your hand, to pierce down to the bottom with your fork, and then mix in some butter, continuing to hold it thus while eating it.
If a lady wishes to eat lobster, let her request the waiter that attends her to extract a portion of it from the shell, and bring it to her on a clean plate—also to place a castor near her.
On no consideration let any lady be persuaded to take two glasses of champagne. It is more than the head of an American female can bear. And she may rest assured that (though unconscious of it herself) all present will find her cheeks flushing, her eyes twinkling, her tongue unusually voluble, her talk loud and silly, and her laugh incessant. Champagne is very insidious, and two glasses may throw her into this pitiable condition.
We have seen a young gentleman lift his plate of soup in both hands, hold it to his mouth, and drink, or rather lap it up. This was at no less a place than Niagara.