your mouth that has been put in it, except dry bones, and stones. To spit
anything whatever into the corner of your napkin, is too nauseating to
comment on. It is horrid to see any one spit skins or pits on a fork or
into the plate. The only way to take anything out of your mouth is between
first-finger and thumb. Dry grape seeds or cherry pits can be dropped from
the lips into the cupped hand. Peaches or other very juicy fruits are
peeled and then eaten with knife and fork, but dry fruits, such as
apples, may be cut and then eaten in the fingers. _Never_ wipe hands that
have fruit juice on them on a napkin without first using a finger bowl,
because fruit juices make indelible stains.

=BIRDS=

Birds are not eaten with the fingers in company! You cut off as much of
the meat as you can, and leave the rest on your plate.

=FORKS OR FINGERS=

All juicy or "gooey" fruits or cakes are best eaten with a fork, but in
most cases it is a matter of dexterity. If you are able to eat a peach in
your fingers and not smear your face, let juice run down, or make a
sucking noise, you are the one in a thousand who _may_, and with utmost
propriety, continue the feat. If you can eat a napoleon or a cream puff
and not let the cream ooze out on the far side, you need not use a fork,
but if you can not eat something--no matter what it is--without getting it
all over your fingers, you must use a fork, and if necessary, a knife
also!

All rules of table manners are made to avoid ugliness; to let any one see
what you have in your mouth is repulsive; to make a noise is to suggest an
animal; to make a mess is disgusting. On the other hand, there are a
number of trifling decrees of etiquette that are merely finical,
unreasonable, and silly. Why one should not cut one's salad in small
pieces if one wants to, makes little sense, unless one wants to cut up a
whole plateful and make the plate messy! A steel knife must not be used
for salad or fruit, because it turns black. To condemn the American custom
of eating a soft-boiled egg in a glass, or cup, because it happens to be
the English fashion to scoop it through the ragged edge of the shell, is
about as reasonable as though we were to proclaim English manners bad
because they tag a breakfast dish, called a "savory" of fish-roe or
something equally inappropriate, after the dessert at dinner.

Many other arbitrary rules for eating food with fork, spoon or fingers,
are also stumbling-blocks