these informal clothes only if very intimate friends are coming to
dinner alone. "Alone" may include as many as eight!--but never includes a
stranger.

[Illustration: A DINNER SERVICE WITHOUT SILVER--"THE LITTLE DINNER IS
THOUGHT BY MOST PEOPLE TO BE THE VERY PLEASANTEST SOCIAL FUNCTION THERE
IS." [Page 228.]]

Otherwise, at informal dinners, the host wears a dinner coat and the
hostess a simple evening dress, or perhaps an elaborate one that has been
seen by everyone and which goes on at little dinners for the sake of
getting some "wear out of it." She never, however, receives formally
standing, though she rises when a guest comes into the room, shakes hands
and sits down again. When dinner is announced, gentlemen do not offer
their arms to the ladies. The hostess and the other ladies go into the
dining-room together, not in a procession, but just as they happen to
come. If one of them is much older than the others, the younger ones wait
for her to go ahead of them, or one who is much younger goes last. The men
stroll in the rear. The hostess on reaching the dining-room goes to her
own place where she stands and tells everyone where she or he is to sit.
"Mary, will you sit next to Jim, and Lucy on his other side; Kate, over
there, Bobo, next to me," etc.

=CARVING ON THE TABLE=

Carving is sometimes seen at "home" dinner tables. A certain type of man
always likes to carve, and such a one does. But in forty-nine houses out
of fifty, in New York at least, the carving is done by the cook in the
kitchen--a roast while it is still in the roasting pan, and close to the
range at that, so that nothing can possibly get cooled off in the carving.
After which the pieces are carefully put together again, and transferred
to an intensely hot platter. This method has two advantages over table
carving; quicker service, and hotter food. Unless a change takes place in
the present fashion, none except cooks will know anything about carving,
which was once considered an art necessary to every gentleman. The boast
of the high-born Southerner, that he could carve a canvas-back holding it
on his fork, will be as unknown as the driving of a four-in-hand.

Old-fashioned butlers sometimes carve in the pantry, but in the most
modern service all carving is done by the cook. Cold meats are, in the
English service, put whole on the sideboard and the family and guests cut
off what they choose themselves. In America cold meat is more often slic