Cutlery is limited to a fork for the salad, a spoon for the coffee, and a fork or spoon for the ice cream. The ices may be in fancy individual shapes, if one chooses to take that much trouble; but the brick, brought in ready sliced for serving, is always suitable, and easier to manage.
Much of this is so generally understood that further details seem superfluous. The least experienced hostess need not be overanxious about small points, if the general order is observed; for luncheon guests are a genial crowd, and nobody notices little mishaps. I am assuming that your guests are all very nice people, in sympathy with you, and aiding you to the extent of their ability to make things pleasant. Those who have this sincere disposition need no instruction in behavior. Each one's conduct will be guided by her own instinctive sense of propriety. One who is habitually polite is not likely to make any blunders at a luncheon, since there are no rigid conventionalities to be infringed.
If the luncheon hour is much past noon, the guests should be careful not to remain too long after, as they might thus be detaining the hostess from later afternoon engagements.
SUPPERS
A supper is a late evening meal, and may be an entertainment by itself, or be served in connection with some social event. A supper is understood to consist prevailingly of hot dishes, which distinguishes the supper from the collation—which might be served on similar occasions—and which is mainly of cold dishes. The distinction is not absolute, however.
A formal supper, or banquet, is served à la Russe, and resembles the dinner in its general conduct; but instead of the heavy roast and vegetables, the game is the conspicuous course, and various preparations of oysters, lobster, terrapin, etc., crowd the menu card, with salads of all kinds. Nine o'clock is a fashionable hour for the sit-down supper. The supper served at a dance or a reception is timed to suit the leading features of the evening. The menu for these "crush" suppers covers the ground of the hot supper and the cold collation combined, and there are few things within the range of dainty cookery that are not permissible.
The most "social" and enjoyable suppers—with the doctor's permission—are those that are served an home after the hostess and her guests have returned from the theatre or opera, lecture or concert. Tiny biscuit, sandwiches, fried oysters, chicken salad, and golden coffee, with ice-cream and some superior cake, served like a luncheon, make a supper easily arranged, and one which winds up a pleasant evening in a very satisfactory way.
BREAKFASTS
A formal breakfast has little distinctive character. It differs very slightly from an early luncheon, except that the viands are more distinctly breakfast dishes; as, toast, hot muffins, omelettes and other preparations of eggs, delicate farinaceous foods, café au lait, etc. If it is the veritable breaking of the fast the guests must be very late risers indeed, as 11 o'clock, or even 12, noon, is a fashionable hour for this so-called breakfast, which is a phase of social entertaining reserved for the "leisure class," or only at odd intervals possible to people of active pursuits. The morning hours are precious to the hurried man of business, and the care-environed housekeeper; and "promptness and dispatch" is the motto of the breakfast table in most houses.
The real breakfast of everyday life is the meal where we least expect to meet guests—unless it be some one who is staying at the house. It is a rare thing for a friend to "drop in" to breakfast, and to invite him to do so is perhaps the rarest expression of hospitality, and will probably remain so, while we remain a nation of brain and hand workers.