entire time. The conveniences of digestion also require more
deliberation, and it would therefore not be unpleasant if an
interval of a quarter of an hour or half an hour were allowed
to intervene between the meats and the dessert.

At dinner, avoid taking upon your plate too many things at
once. One variety of meat and one kind of vegetable is the
_maximum._ When you take another sort of meat, or any dish
not properly a vegetable, you always change your plate.

The fashion of dining inordinately late in this country is
foolish. It is borrowed from England without any regard to
the difference in circumstances between the two nations. In
London, the whole system of daily duties is much later. The
fact of parliament's sitting during the evening and not in
the morning, tends to remove the active part of the day to a
much more advanced hour. When persons rise at ten or two
o'clock, it is not to be expected that they should dine till
eight or twelve in the evening. There is nothing of this sort
in France. There they dine at three, or earlier. We have
known some fashionable dinners in different cities in this
country at so late an hour as eight or nine o'clock. This is
absurd, where the persons have all breakfasted at eight in
the morning. From four o'clock till five varies the proper
hour for a dinner party here.

Never talk about politics at a dinner table or in a drawing
room.

When you are going into a company it is of advantage to run