A set of plates for a course at dinner is unique in the Chinese or Japanese patterns. Dessert sets of Bohemian glass or of cut-glass are a novelty; however, the painted sets seem more appropriate for the dessert (fruits, etc.), while glass sets are tasteful for jellies, cold puddings, etc., or what are called the cold _entremêts_ served just before the dessert proper.
But it seems difficult, in entering the Colamores’ and other large places of the kind in New York, to know what to select, there are such myriads of exquisite plates, table ornaments, and fairy-lands of glass.
I consider the table ornaments in silver much less attractive than those in fancy ware. There are lovely maidens in bisque, reclining, while they hold painted oval dishes for a jelly, a Bavarian cream, or for flowers or fruit; cherub boys in majolica, tugging away with wheelbarrows, which should be loaded with flowers; antique water-jugs; cheese-plates in Venetian glass; clusters of lilies from mirror bases to hold flowers or _bonbons_; tripods of dolphins, with great pink mouths, to hold salt and pepper.
If a lady, with tastes to cultivate in her family, can afford elegancies in dress, let her retrench in that, and bid farewell to all her ugly and insipid white china; let wedding presents consist more of these ornaments (which may serve to decorate any room), and less of silver salt-cellars, pepper-stands, and pickle-forks.
Senator Sumner was a lover of the ceramic art. His table presented a delightful study to the connoisseur, with its different courses of plates, all different and _recherché_ in design. Nothing aroused this inimitable host at a dinner party from his literary labors more effectually than a special announcement to him by Marley of the arrival from Europe of a new set of quaint and elegant specimens of China ware. He would repair to New York on the next train.
15th. I will close these suggestions by copying from an English book a practical drill exercise for serving at table. The dishes are served from the side-table.
“Let us suppose a table laid for eight persons, dressed in its best; as attendants, only two persons--a butler and a footman, or one of these, with a page or neat waiting-maid; and let us suppose some one stationed outside the door in the butler’s pantry to do nothing but fetch up, or hand, or carry off dishes, one by one: