person to remove the dishes, beginning at any convenient place at the table. After a cereal course, place a dish on your tray and quickly, without any noise, lay the spoon by the side of it on your tray. Put the next dish on the top of the one you have already taken and the spoon by the other spoon. When you have taken dishes and spoons, take plates, piling one above another on your tray.
If there are few people at table, you may take all at once; if there are more, you must judge for yourself how many times to go. Follow this rule: Never pile dishes on a tray in a manner to look disagreeable to yourself or to those who sit at table.
Salad and dessert plates you may remove as you do cereal dishes, putting forks or spoons on the tray by the side of the plates.
After a meat course, go to the right, holding your tray in your left hand near enough to let no particles of food fall upon the table. Take the knife and fork at the same time in your right hand, lay the knife on one side of your
tray and the fork on the other side. As you go around the table in this way put all the knives together on one side and the forks on the other. Carry the knives and forks to the pantry. Next take the plates. Put one above another on your tray until you have taken three or four from the table. Proceed in this manner until all are removed.
A waitress will do well to make herself acquainted as soon as possible with the proper way of serving other courses than those of the simple dinner. She should know how to serve oysters and clams cold on the half-shell, or to see that the oyster plates are thoroughly chilled without being cracked. She should know the different sauces and the correct manner of serving. For instance, if game be served without a sauce, she may offer dressed celery or lettuce to be taken on the same plate. If a hot sauce and a salad are both served, she will provide an extra plate for the salad. She should learn the correct temperature for wines, as well as the glasses in which they belong,
and various other details necessary to be attended to during a full dinner.
Many things may be learned by cheerfully assisting the caterer who serves an occasional dinner in the household, or by taking a position where a part of the parlor maid’s duty is to assist an experienced butler; or, in many houses, the mistress herself will kindly give the necessary instruction.
A waitress who has become competent may arrange and serve special meals, delegating the work done formerly with a caterer to assistants under her. She must be careful not to attempt more than she can safely perform, and then carry out her plan with quiet confidence in her own ability. Except in case of an accident which she cannot remedy, she should not speak to the hostess, who should be left perfectly free to entertain her guests without a care about the food which they are eating. All doubts should be settled before the lady of the house goes to her room to dress for dinner. A waitress, however competent, must consult those whom
she serves upon the special way of having many things done. She must know how to sharpen carvers, but she must not try her hand upon new ones without finding out whether the host prefers to handle them entirely himself; this question to be asked, of course, before laying the table. The special form of serving boiled eggs should also be settled, and the question of serving cheeses whole or broken.