If we ourselves seek to maintain beauty, order, and kindliness in the conduct of the table, our children acquire a love of all that makes for beauty and order and kindliness, for righteousness in the little things of life. A clean tablecloth may be a means of grace. You have to try to live up to it. Order and quietness in eating are not separable from the rest of the life. To lift up life at any point is to raise the whole level. To let it down at any point is to let all down. But to lift up the level of conversation at the table is to raise the level of the entire occasion and to make it more than a period of eating, to convert it into a festival, a joyous occasion of the spirit. The meal should be in all things worthy of the unseen guest.
How near we all come together at the table! In its freedom how clearly are we seen by our children! Here they know us for what we are and so learn to interpret life.
I. Reference for Study
Table Talk. Pamphlet. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa.
II. Topics Tor Discussion
1. The relation of mental conditions to digestion.
2. The relation of table-etiquette to life-habits.
3. The table as an opportunity for the grace of courtesy, and the relation of this grace to Christian character.
4. Training children in listening as well as in talking at table.
5. Do you regard table-talk and table-manners as having any directly religious values? Why?