12 Steps for Correct Dinner Tables

        Of course, every hostess knows now that the tray is no longer used in serving and that the servant holds only a folded napkin to take its place. She knows also that only one plate must be brought to the table or taken away from it at a time.

The Young Housekeeper says that she finds there is often confusion in the minds of her confreres about the proper way to set a table. Once, she says, two sisters quarreled as to whether the edges or the backs of the knives should be turned toward the plates and did not speak to each other during an entire dinner-party, to the great embarrassment of the guests. For these reasons she gives here the rules for setting the table: 

1. Put the knives to the right of the plate with their edges turned toward it; with these go the spoons, beginning with the soup spoon and ending with the tiny coffee spoon, if coffee is served at the table. 
2. The forks are placed at the left of the plate with their prongs turned upward. 
3. The glasses are placed near the points of the knives, while the napkins go to the left of the plates. 
4. Usually at dinner a piece of bread is folded within the napkin. 
5. At a dinner or luncheon no guest is ever left without a plate before him. As the serving man or woman removes the plate of a course with one hand with the other he places another plate before the diner. 
6. Meats are now usually served from a side table and are passed by the servant, as are the vegetables. 
7. The only things which are placed upon the table aside from the candles, flowers and tiny other decorations there may be, are such things as olives, bon-bons, nuts, etc... 
8. In serving dessert a plate is placed before the guest on which is a finger-bowl resting on a doily. The doily and finger-bowl are removed by the guest and placed before him and the dessert is then brought on in individual dishes or glasses which are set upon the plate. 
9. Olives are always taken with the fingers and not with a spoon, so are candies and lump sugar and frequently salted nuts. In fact, the fingers are used whenever it is possible in order to do away with a multiplicity of implements. 
10. A competent man or maid can serve eight guests, but that is about all that can be properly attended to by one person. 
11. Of course, every hostess knows now that the tray is no longer used in serving and that the servant holds only a folded napkin to take its place. She knows also that only one plate must be brought to the table or taken away from it at a time. 
12. Coffee is usually served after dinner in the drawing-room, the hostess pouring it from a pot into the little cups,  a servant passing sugar — and cream for the vandals— with it. 

Those rules are so simple that there is probably no one left in the country who does not know them, but lest there should be even one person not informed on these subjects she writes them down here.— Stockton Independent, 1915 

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia