apologize for it. You can show your regret in your face, but it is not
well-bred to put it into words.

To abstain from taking the last piece on the dish, or the last glass
of wine in the decanter, only because it is the last, is highly
ill-bred. It implies a fear on your part that the vacancy cannot be
supplied, and almost conveys an affront to your host.

To those ladies who have houses and servants at command, we have one
or two remarks to offer. Every housekeeper should be acquainted with
the routine of a dinner and the etiquette of a dinner-table. No lady
should be utterly dependent on the taste and judgment of her cook.
Though she need not know how to dress a dish, she should be able to
judge of it when served. The mistress of a house, in short, should
be to her cook what a publisher is to his authors--that is to
say, competent to form a judgment upon their works, though himself
incapable of writing even a magazine article.

If you wish to give a good dinner, and do not know in what manner to
set about it, you will do wisely to order it from Birch, Kühn, or any
other first-rate _restaurateur_. By these means you ensure the best
cookery and a faultless _carte_.

Bear in mind that it is your duty to entertain your friends in the
best manner that your means permit. This is the least you can do to
recompense them for the expenditure of time and money which they incur
in accepting your invitation.

"To invite a friend to dinner," says Brillat Savarin, "is to become
responsible for his happiness so long as he is under your roof."