At dinner do not put butter on your bread. Never dip a piece of bread into the gravy or preserves upon your plate and then bite it, but if you wish to eat them together, break the bread into small pieces, and carry these to your mouth with your fork.
Use always the salt-spoon, sugar-tongs, and butter knife; to use your own knife, spoon, or fingers, evinces a shocking want of good-breeding.
Never criticize any dish before you.
If a dish is distasteful to you, decline it, but make no remarks about it. It is sickening and disgusting to explain at a table how one article makes you sick, or why some other dish has become distasteful to you. I have seen a well-dressed tempting dish go from a table untouched, because one of the company told a most disgusting anecdote about finding vermin served in a similar dish. No wit in the narration can excuse so palpably an error of politeness.
Never put bones, or the seeds of fruit upon the tablecloth. Put them upon the edge of your plate.
Never use your knife for any purpose but to cut your food. It is not meant to be put in your mouth. Your fork is intended to carry the food from your plate to your mouth, and no gentleman ever eats with his knife.
If the meat or fish upon your plate is too rare or too well-done, do not eat it; give for an excuse that you prefer some other dish before you; but never tell your host that his cook has made the dish uneatable.
Never speak when you have anything in your mouth. Never pile the food on your plate as if you were starving, but take a little at a time; the dishes will not run away.
Never use your own knife and fork to help either yourself or others. There is always one before the dish at every well-served table, and you should use that.
It is a good plan to accustom yourself to using your fork with the left hand, when eating, as you thus avoid the awkwardness of constantly passing the fork from your left hand to your right, and back again, when cutting your food and eating it.