If it is the custom of the family to use a musical Japanese gong to announce meals, strike it two or three light taps. If they don’t use one, then go to the mistress wherever she is and say quietly, “Dinner is served, Mrs. ——.”
When every one is seated, take a plate of soup in each hand and place each plate in turn in front of each person, laying it on the dinner plate that is already there, serving the older members of the family first, if there are children, otherwise going right around the table, always laying it down from the right side of each person.
When the soup course is finished and the second course is in the pantry, bring a hot plate in your left hand and, taking up the serving plate, with the soup plate on it, in your right, replace it with the fresh hot one, doing this from the right side of each person; going, in this way, all around the table till all have hot, clean plates.
Then bring in the platter of meat, placing it in front of the carver with the carving knife, which has been sharpened before the meal, at his right and the fork at his left side. Put the gravy boat and ladle at his right.
Stand at the left of the carver with an extra hot plate in your hand and, taking the plate with meat on it, put the empty, hot plate in its place. This gives the carver time to cut another slice and have it ready when you come back with the next empty plate.
Now go right around the table putting a plate of meat before each person and taking up the empty plate till all have been served. Put down and take up from the right side.
If there is jelly or any small thing to pass, put it on a small tray, having first placed a spoon in it, and, taking the tray in one hand and a vegetable dish in the other, pass them all around the table, stooping a little as you first offer one, and then draw back and offer the other on the left side of each person.
(It is a good rule to remember in serving a meal that everything that admits of a choice must be passed at the left and that everything that does not admit of a choice must be placed from the right.)
Next take the remaining vegetable in one hand and a plate of bread in the other and pass them to the left of each person all around the table.
Watch carefully to pass food again before any one has a chance to ask for anything and see that all have water and bread throughout the dinner.