If one tastes of something which one does not care to swallow, it may be removed from the mouth with the closed left hand and placed on the plate. This should be done silently and with as little attention as possible.
Never take a chicken or chop bone in the fingers. Cut the meat from the bone, leaving all that does not readily separate.
Bread and butter plates, with the butter spreader, are always used, except at formal dinners, when the dinner-roll is laid in the fold of the napkin.
The knife is used only for cutting, and for spreading butter on bread in the absence of butter spreaders.
Almost all foods are eaten with the fork, which should always be used in the right hand with the tines up. It may be held in the left hand, tines down, when one is cutting, the knife being in the right hand.
The soup spoon is an almost circular and quite deep spoon. Therefore it is obvious that the soup should be noiselessly sipped from the side of it. When the oval dessert spoon is used for soup, it is especially necessary to sip the liquid from the side.
Special spoon-shaped forks are provided for salads, ices, and creams, but for these spoons may always be substituted.
No hot drink should be poured from the cup into the saucer to cool it.
Toothpicks should not be passed at the table. They may be left on the sideboard, and if one is needed, it may be requested of the waiter or taken as you leave the room, but always used in private.
Wherein elderly people do differently from the established ways of to-day, they are not to be criticised. Manners change even several times within a generation, and such may be simply following the customs they were taught. When the three-tined fork was the only one in common use, the blade of the knife was much more in requisition than now.