The Importance of Good Table Manners

How do your manners appear? Eve knows her manners are not a pretty sight and that they can offend others whom she is dining with at a table.

Eve doesn't know her table manners offend the nice friends she longs for. It's not a pretty sight to play with ice-cream in all-day, sucker fashion. Nor is it charming to carry food half-way to the mouth, then plunge at it the way a duck dives for his dinner. It looks pleasanter and it's so much better manners to lift food straight to the mouth and take the whole spoonful at once.

To be uncertain about table service is a give-away, too. If the host passes a filled dinner plate to a guest, the plate should be kept, not passed around with cries of “you first.” Second helpings, if they're wanted, should be accepted without excuses for “large appetites.” Be at ease, learn the correct code for table manners. – Santa Ana Journal, May, 8, 1957

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

Manners and Social Customs

When the lady at the other end of the table proffers you a second piece of pie, if you want it, say so. It is the least compliment you can pay her for giving you a seat at her table. Don’t keep on in the old New England fashion of saying “No,” with a tone and glance which convey the unmistakable gloss, “Yes, but I wan’t a little urging.

Perhaps it is the highest test of good breeding to be able to accept and bear an unusual load of obligation without allowing the friend who confers the favor to think you feel overburdened. Ill-bred people who are ill at ease in their company manners, generally meet all proffered courtesies at first as though they could on no account think of accepting them. Thus, when the gentleman who carves the chicken asks you which bit you prefer, believe that he asks because he would be pleased to know, and tell him, instead of saying what is obviously a what-d’-ye call-it, that it makes not the slightest difference: and when the lady at the other end of the table proffers you a second piece of pie, if you want it, say so. It is the least compliment you can pay her for giving you a seat at her table. Don’t keep on in the old New England fashion of saying “No,” with a tone and glance which convey the unmistakable gloss, “ Yes, but I wan’t a little urging.”— By Joaquin Miller for the Boston Transcript, 1874

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