On arriving at a dinner a servant should hand each male guest an envelope containing a card. This card will bear the name of the lady whom he is to take in to dinner. This part of the ceremony is usually accompanied by groans and maledictions as the gentlemen tremblingly open their envelopes.
Some hostesses allow their guests to file in to dinner in ignorance of their partners. They thus learn their fate at the dinner table, which postpones the terrible shock for as long a period as possible.
Nothing adds so much to an appearance of savoir faire as the art of gracefully removing from a dinner or evening party a gentleman who has imbibed, not wisely but too well. The correct method is to ask the butler to inform him that a lady wishes to speak to him on the telephone. When he has left the room, spring upon him in the hall and chivy him into a cab.
Rouge sticks and powder puffs may be used by ladies at luncheons, but never at dinners.
If a bachelor receives a dinner invitation from people who are not really “in the swim” (people, let us say, like old friends, classmates, and business associates, who are, so to speak, “on the green, but not dead to the hole”), he should simply toss it into the fire. This plan will prevent any more invitations from so undesirable a quarter. Were he to answer these people politely, they would certainly annoy him again at a later date. Remember that “the coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword.”
Do not address your best thoughts to the ladies until they have had an opportunity to brush the glove powder from their arms and to look carefully at the dresses and ornaments of the other ladies at the dinner.