"Say 'no.' This is the fourth time wine has been handed to you, and I am sure you have had enough. Decline this time if you please. Decline that dish too. Are you going to eat of everything that is handed? I pity you if you do. No, you must not ask for more cheese, and you must eat it with your fork. Break the rusk with your fingers. Good. You are drinking a glass of old port. Do not quaff it down at a gulp in that way. Never drink a whole glassful of anything at once.

"Well, here is the wine and dessert. Take whichever wine you like, but remember you must keep to that, and not change about. Before you go up stairs I will allow you a glass of sherry after your claret, but otherwise drink of one wine only. You don't mean to say you are helping yourself to wine before the ladies. At least, offer it to the one next to you, and then pass it on, gently, not with a push like that. Do not drink so fast; you will hurry me in passing the decanters, if I see that your glass is empty. You need not eat dessert till the ladies are gone, but offer them whatever is nearest to you. And now they are gone, draw your chair near mine, and I will try and talk more pleasantly to you. You will come out admirably at your next dinner with all my teaching. What! you are excited, you are talking loud to the colonel. Nonsense. Come and talk easily to me or to your nearest neighbor. There, don't drink any more wine, for I see you are getting romantic. You oblige me to make a move. You have had enough of those walnuts; you are keeping me, my dear sir. So now to coffee [one cup] and tea, which I beg you will not pour into your saucer to cool. Well, the dinner has done you good, and me too. Let us be amiable to the ladies, but not too much so."

"Champ, champ; Smack, smack; Smack, smack; Champ, champ;--It is one thing to know how to make a pudding, and another to know how to eat it when made. Unmerciful and monstrous are the noises with which some persons accompany the eating--no, the devouring of the food for which, we trust, they are thankful. To sit down with a company of such masticators is like joining 'a herd of swine feeding.' Soberly, at no time, probably, are the rules of good breeding less regarded than at 'feeding time,' and at no place is a departure from these rules more noticeable than at table. Some persons gnaw at a crust as dogs gnaw a bone, rattle knives and spoons against their teeth as though anxious to prove which is the harder, and scrape their plates with an energy and perseverance which would be very commendable if bestowed upon any object worth the trouble. Others, in defiance of the old nursery rhyme--

'I must not dip, howe'er I wish, My spoon or finger in the dish;'

are perpetually helping themselves in this very straightforward and unsophisticated manner. Another, with a mouth full of food contrives to make his teeth and tongue perform the double duty of chewing and talking at the same time. Another, quite in military style, in the intervals of cramming, makes his knife and fork keep guard over the jealously watched plate, being held upright on either side in the clenched fist, like the musket of a raw recruit. And another, as often as leisure serves, fidgets his plate from left to right, and from right to left, or round and round, until the painful operation of feeding is over.

"There is, we know, such a thing as being 'too nice'--'more nice than wise.' It is quite possible to be fastidious. But there are also such inconsiderable matters as decency and good order; and it surely is better to err on the right than on the wrong side of good breeding."