One may ask the waiter for a second or third glass of water, as even at a formal dinner that is always permissible.
Lettuce, cress, and chicory are never cut with a knife, but rolled up on the fork and so conveyed to the mouth.
Never leave the spoon in any cup while drinking from it. Liquid bouillon,--not jellied,--should be drunk from the bouillon cup.
Spoons are used for grape fruit and oranges, when cut in halves and put upon a plate, for soft-boiled eggs, puddings, custards, and gelatins.
With fruit, finger-bowls should always be passed. A bowl half-full of water is placed upon a plate covered with a doily. Unless the fruit is passed upon a second plate, the bowl and doily are removed from this and set at one side, the fruit being eaten from this plate. The fingers are then dipped, one hand at a time, into the water, and wiped upon the napkin.
Salt should never be put upon the tablecloth, but always on the side of the plate, unless the individual salts are provided.
Never spit out a prune, peach, or cherry stone.
Never hold food on the fork while you are talking, ready as soon as you reach a period to be put into your mouth. Having once picked it up, eat it promptly.
A bit of bread, but nothing else, may be used, if necessary, to help one put food upon the fork.
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.
