If you are invited to drink with an acquaintance, and you do not drink wine, bow, raise your glass of water, and drink with him. If you do drink wine, take the same sort as that selected by the person you drink with.
It is considered ill bred to empty your glass on these occasions or to drink a full glass of wine at a draught on any occasion.
While on the subject of wine-drinking, it may not be amiss to observe that in England it is considered inelegant to say “port wine” or “sherry wine.” In England they always say “port” or “sherry.” On the other hand, no well-bred Frenchman ever speaks of wines in any other way than as “_Vin de Champagne_,” “_Vin de Bordeaux_,” and so on. Thus we see that what is the wrong thing to do in one country is the right thing to do in another.
Do not offer a lady wine till she has finished her soup.
Do not hesitate to take the last piece on a dish or the last glass of wine in a decanter simply because it is the last. To do so is to indirectly express the fear that you would exhaust the supply.
Avoid picking your teeth at the table if possible; but if pick them you must, do it, if you can, when you are not observed. “There is one continental custom,” says the London _Queen_, “which the true-born Briton holds in holy horror--that is, the use of those convenient little lengths of wood which to every foreigner are as necessary to his comfort as a napkin for his mouth or water for his fingers. We English regard the use of the toothpick as a barbarism, a horror, an indecency, and would not take one of those clean wooden spills between our lips for all the world. Nevertheless, a great many of us who would shudder at the iniquity of a toothpick, thrust our fingers into our mouths and free our back teeth with these natural ‘cure-dents,’ which gives a singularly wolfish and awful appearance to the operator, and makes the onlooker regret the insular prejudice which will not rather use the universal continental toothpick, wherein, at least, if properly and delicately done, is no kind of indecency or disgust.”
The procedure with finger-bowls and doilies differs somewhat on different occasions, the difference depending upon the time the bowl is brought, and whether a little white napkin comes with it. If the bowl, with a doily only, comes on your dessert-plate, you will remove it to your left, placing the doily under it. When you come to use the bowl, you will wet your fingers in the perfumed water it contains, and then dry them on your napkin. But if a little white napkin is brought with the bowl and doily, you will use that to wipe your fingers on. It is entirely permissible to wet the corner of your table-napkin, or of the little white napkin that comes with the bowl, and pass it over your lips. Of course, you would do this before putting your fingers in the water. If there are any fruit-stains on your fingers, you will use the bit of lemon that comes in the water to remove them.