The Art of Good Table Manners by Cincinnati Commercial

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 15, 1879

The Art of Good Table Manners

By Cincinnati Commercial

No matter how deliciously cooked one's food may be, there may be surroundings which take away his appetite. If he raise his eyes in a public dining-room and behold a countless host of his fellow-men eating with their knives, plunging those dangerous implements well down their throats at every mouthful; if they sit curled up like the letter S, with their elbows propped upon the table; if they "schlurf" their soup and coffee like a quadruped; if they talk so loud that he knows every bottle of ale and vanilla custard that he ordered in the circuit of ten feet about him, the epicurean will hardly care much for his dinner. Refined and dainty table manners are an indispensable element of the fine art of eating—eating being an operation which is not superlatively pretty to look at, at its best. —Cincinnati Commercial.