This is more especially a ladies’ meal. If one gives a lunch party, ladies alone are generally invited. It is an informal meal on ordinary occasions, when every thing is placed upon the table at once. A servant remains in the room only long enough to serve the first round of dishes, then leaves, supposing that confidential conversation may be desired. Familiar friends often “happen in” to lunch, and are always to be expected.

Some fashionable ladies have the reputation of having very fine lunches—chops, chickens, oysters, salads, chocolate, and many other good things being provided; and others, just as fashionable, have nothing but a cup of tea or chocolate, some thin slices of bread and butter, and cold meat; or, if of Teutonic taste, nothing but cheese, crackers, and ale, thus reserving the appetite for dinner.

In entertaining at lunch, the dishes are served in the same manner as for dinner. Each dish is served as a separate course. It may be placed on the table before the hostess, if the lunch party is not very large; but it is generally served from the side. The table is also decorated in the same manner as for dinner, with a centre-piece of flowers or of fruit, and with various compotiers around the centre, containing fruits, bonbons, little fancy cakes, Indian or other preserves, etc. Other ornaments, in Dresden china, majolica ware, Venetian or French glass, etc., filled with flowers, are often seen. Little dishes of common glass in different shapes, as crosses, quarter-moons, etc., about an inch high (see cuts, page 58), are also filled with flowers, and placed at symmetrical distances. As the last-mentioned decorations are very cheap, every one may indulge in them, and consider that there are no more beautiful ornaments, after all.

The lunch-table is generally covered with a colored table-cloth.

The principal dishes served are patÉs, croquettes, shell-fish, game, salads—in fact, all kinds of entrÉes and cold desserts, or I may say dishes are preferred which do not require carving. Bouillon is generally served as a first course in bouillon cups, which are quite like large coffee-cups, or coffee or tea cups may be used, although any dinner soup served in soup-plates is en regle. A cup of chocolate, with whipped cream on the top, is often served as another course.

I will give five bills of fare, reserved from five very nice little lunch parties:

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