The Mentor. Ayres Alfred

      Always wipe your mouth before drinking, in order that you may not grease the brim of your glass with your lips.

      Taking wine with people and the drinking of toasts at private dinners are no longer the fashion. Every one drinks much or little or none at all as he chooses, without attracting attention.

      If, however, you should find yourself at a table where the old custom is observed, you will not invite your host to take wine with you; it is his privilege to invite you.

      If you are invited to drink with an acquaintance, and you do not drink wine, bow, raise your glass of water, and drink with him. If you do drink wine, take the same sort as that selected by the person you drink with.

      It is considered ill bred to empty your glass on these occasions or to drink a full glass of wine at a draught on any occasion.

      While on the subject of wine-drinking, it may not be amiss to observe that in England it is considered inelegant to say “port wine” or “sherry wine.” In England they always say “port” or “sherry.” On the other hand, no well-bred Frenchman ever speaks of wines in any other way than as “Vin de Champagne,” “Vin de Bordeaux,” and so on. Thus we see that what is the wrong thing to do in one country is the right thing to do in another.

      Do not offer a lady wine till she has finished her soup.

      Do not hesitate to take the last piece on a dish or the last glass of wine in a decanter simply because it is the last. To do so is to indirectly express the fear that you would exhaust the supply.

      Avoid picking your teeth at the table if possible; but if pick them you must, do it, if you can, when you are not observed. “There is one continental custom,” says the London Queen, “which the true-born Briton holds in holy horror – that is, the use of those convenient little lengths of wood which to every foreigner are as necessary to his comfort as a napkin for his mouth or water for his fingers. We English regard the use of the toothpick as a barbarism, a horror, an indecency, and would not take one of those clean wooden spills between our lips for all the world. Nevertheless, a great many of us who would shudder at the iniquity of a toothpick, thrust our fingers into our mouths and free our back teeth with these natural ‘cure-dents,’ which gives a singularly wolfish and awful appearance to the operator, and makes the onlooker regret the insular prejudice which will not rather use the universal continental toothpick, wherein, at least, if properly and delicately done, is no kind of indecency or disgust.”