If you should happen to be blessed with those rely nuisances,
children, and should be entertaining company, never allow
them to be brought in after dinner, unless they are
particularly asked for, and even then it is better to say
they are at school. Some persons, with the intention of
paying their court to the father, express great desire to see
the sons; but they should have some mercy upon the rest of
the party, particularly as they know that they themselves
would be the most disturbed of all, if their urgent entreaty
was granted.

Never at any time, whether at a formal or a familiar dinner
party, commit the impropriety of talking to a servant: nor
ever address any remark about one of them to one of the
party. Nothing can be more ill-bred. You merely ask for what
you want in a grave and civil tone, and wait with patience
till your order is obeyed.

It is a piece of refined coarseness to employ the fingers
instead of the fork to effect certain operations at the
dinner table, and on some other similar occasions. To know
how and when to follow the fashion of Eden, and when that of
more civilized life, is one of the many points which
distinguish a gentleman from one not a gentleman; or rather,
in this case, which shows the difference between a man of the
world, and one who has not "the tune of the time."* Cardinal
Richelieu detected an adventurer who passed himself off for a
nobleman, by his helping himself to olives with a fork. He
might have applied the test to a vast many other things. Yet,
on the other hand, a gentleman would lose his reputation, if