Gilded Age Tips on Finger Bowls

Did your waiter bring a bowl of strong yellow or bronze tinged, coarse-colored water, and no napkin? Yikes! 

The style of serving finger bowls almost always accords with the prices charged for the dinner. This waiter brings you a bowl of strong yellow or bronze tinged, coarse-colored water, and no napkin. He will bring you a check then at least twenty-five cents less than you expected; but another waiter, who prepares the finger bowls in your sight with ostentation and sprays the perfumes in them with a lavish hand, will charge you at least fifty cents more than you figured it in your mind when giving the order, and he is sure to bring back nothing less than a quarter in change, that you may fee him liberally. 

It is peculiar to finger bowl New York restaurants that they never have any five cent pieces. The smallest piece of change a waiter ever brings is a dime. That is only with plain glass finger bowls. If the bowl is cut glass, the change is in quarter or halves. The only man who ever escaped giving a fee is said to be the one who told the waiter that the place was run much better under the former proprietor. The waiter was so dazed that he broke two finger bowls, and in the confusion the man got away. -New York Star, March 1887

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