For those who love love love etiquette
“He attended to that and came down with an invitation for me to go up—yes, certainly; and, while we walked along over to the bank to get money, and collect my cigars and tobacco, and to the cigar shop to trade back the lottery tickets and get my umbrella, and to Mr. Natural’s to pay…
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I have a terrible confession to make. I love Jello. My mother and father were old enough to remember when Jello was still a new and fancy dessert and so they still treated it like any other sweet treat. Sometimes it was plain, but other times, mom served it in fancy molds with fruit suspended in it. My…
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“When ladies have according to the French custom, set apart one morning or one evening in the week for receiving callers, it is a breach of etiquette to call at any other time, unless a short visit in the city or business that will not admit of delay are the excuses. An hour in the…
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“The finger-bowls are usually brought in on the dessert plates which also hold the dessert spoons and forks. Each person sets his finger-bowl and the doily underneath it on the table in front of or at the side of his dessert plate, to be used later. The dessert spoon and fork are generally placed on the table…
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“This is rather a new entertainment. Its novelty lies in the fact that the beverage served is chocolate, and that chocolate enters into all the refreshments served, such as chocolate wafers, etc. A chocolate lemonade will be a nice addition in hot weather, chocolate bon bon being passed in dainty silver bon-bon baskets.” Social Etiquette…
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Here we have one of those weird evolutions of terms where one phrase begins to mean nearly the opposite thing. High Tea is one of the great examples of this. Company dinner is another. For an American in the early and mid 19th century, a company dinner would have been one of the most extravagant…
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The chopstick has been used since 1200 B.C. starting in China and moving steadily throughout Asia over the next seven hundred years, though they were used mainly for cooking not for eating for hundreds of years. Bronze versions of chopsticks were even found at Yinxu archeological digs that date back to near 400 B.C. Over time,…
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“It is bad manners for a gentleman to use perfumes to a noticeable extent.” Encyclopaedia of Business and Social Forms, 1880 Old etiquette books are apparently very opinionated about a man’s toilette. When I was teaching etiquette, I taught a number of eleven and twelve year-old boys. I used to say that cologne should be used…
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Now we really are getting obscure! I’ve only been served demitasse once. On the hubster and my second anniversary, we traveled to France and had dinner in a chateau in the Loire Valley, (schmancy, I know). It was eight courses with the complimentary wines, at the end I was served a demitasse coffee with a demitasse spoon…
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My parents were always a little out of touch. My father born in 1921 and my mother in 1932, they had married late in life and then had children even later. They did things their way and it was the way of a completely different era than we were living in. When I went to my first…
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