A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School

else are slipped into ivory rings, which are numbered. A stranger has a clean one, at each meal. Tablecloths should be well starched, and ironed on the right side, and always, when taken off, folded in the ironed creases. _Doilies_ are colored napkins, which, when fruit is offered, should always be furnished, to prevent a person from staining a nice handkerchief, or permitting the fruit-juice to dry on the fingers. Casters and salt-stands should be put in order, every morning, when washing the breakfast things. Always, if possible, provide _fine_ and _dry_ table-salt, as many persons are much disgusted with that which is dark, damp, and coarse. Be careful to keep salad-oil closely corked, or it will grow rancid. Never leave the salt-spoons in the salt, nor the mustard-spoon in the mustard, as they are thereby injured. Wipe them, immediately after the meal. For table-furniture, French china is deemed the nicest, but it is liable to the objection of having plates, so made, that salt, butter, and similar articles, will not lodge on the edge, but slip into the centre. Select knives and forks, which have weights in the handles, so that, when laid down, they will not touch the table. Those with rivetted handles last longer than any others. Horn handles (except buckhorn) are very poor. The best are cheapest in the end. Knives should be sharpened once a month, unless they are kept sharp by the mode of scouring. _On Setting Tables._ Neat housekeepers observe the manner in which a table is set more than any thing else; and to a person of good taste, few things are more annoying, than to see the table placed askew; the tablecloth soiled, rumpled, and put on awry; the plates, knives, and dishes thrown about, without any order; the pitchers soiled on the outside, and sometimes within; the tumblers dim; the caster out of order; the butter pitched on the plate, without any symmetry; the salt coarse, damp, and dark; the bread cut in a mixture of junks and slices; the dishes of food set on at random, and without mats;