Never descend to the breakfast-room without having washed your face and brushed your hair. Cleanliness is a part of good breeding.

Never appear at breakfast, even in sultry weather, without your coat, waistcoat, collar and necktie. Are you a gentleman or a Hottentot?

Never, even in winter, take your seat at the table in your top-boots, with your overcoat buttoned to the chin, and with a sealskin cap drawn down to your eyebrows. But if you are breakfasting in Franz Josef’s Land, this warning may be disregarded.

Never fail to help the ladies first, before gorging every edible in sight. You will thus cultivate a reputation for self-abnegation that may stand you in stead.

Never, if a guest, inspect the butter suspiciously, smelling and tasting it, and then say, “Pretty good butter—what there is of it!” Never, having perceived your blunder, hasten to rectify it by calling out, “Ay, and plenty of it, too—such as it is! Ha, ha, ha!” Better abstain from criticism altogether, since nothing is costing you anything.

Never insist on starting this meal with soup. Cazuela, or breakfast soup, is a Spanish-American custom that has not yet been imported.

Never, before expressing your preference for tea or coffee, ask your hostess which she would recommend as the least poisonous? She might not consider the insinuation as complimentary to herself.

Never dispose of eggs by biting off the small end, throwing the head far back, and noisily sucking them out of the shells. A spoon, or even a fork, is preferable. Besides you might encounter a bad one when too late.

Never wipe your nose on your napkin, or use it in dusting off your boots on rising. Napkins have their legitimate uses, handkerchiefs theirs.

Never, on finishing with your napkin, fastidiously fold it away in its ring, nor carelessly hang it on the chandelier. Use judgment in little things.

Never cool your tea or coffee by pouring it back and forth from cup to saucer and from saucer to cup in a high arching torrent, after the manner of a diamond-fastened bar-tender with a cocktail or julep. There’s a time and place for everything.

Never suck your knife contemplatively, and then dive it in the butter-dish. This is wholly indefensible.

Never use the butter-knife in besmearing and plastering your bread with butter an inch thick. Better tear up the bread in small chunks, and sop up the butter with it.

Never cut meat with your teaspoon, sip tea from a fork, or painfully suggest sword-swallowing by eating with your knife. Try to appear civilized.

Never convey the impression that you are shoveling food down an excavation rather than eating it. Cultivated people eat, barbarians engulf.

Never smack the lips and roll the eyes while masticating, accompanying the operation with such expressions as, “Oh, golly, but that’s good!” “Aha, that touches the spot!” Give your neighbors a show.

Never reach far over the table with both hands for a coveted morsel. Ask for it, call a servant, or circulate around the table behind the other breakfasters’ chairs.

Never shake your fist at the waiters, or swear at them in loud and imperious tones. This is not the best form even in a restaurant.

Never pounce on a particular morsel, intended for an invalid, like a hawk on a June-bug. First, say to yourself reflectively, “Am I in a private breakfast-room or a barn?”

Never try to dispose of beefsteak, peach-jam and coffee at the same mouthful. Failure, complete and ignominious, will be the result.

Never, if at a tenth-rate boarding-house, insist upon having broiled game. In the bright lexicon of the boarding-house there’s no such word as quail.

Never, unless you are John L. Sullivan, indicate your irritation by upsetting the table, or shying muffins at the landlord. Equability of temper and a good appetite should go hand in hand.

Never fail in urbanity with those around you. Loud squabbling, fighting with the feet under the table, and open rivalry for the smiles of a pretty waitress are altogether alien to the higher culture.

Never make a pretense, on quitting the table, of mistaking the napkin for your handkerchief. This is an old, old dodge.

Never stretch yourself, gulch, gape and yawp on rising. You should have finished all that in bed.

Never refer to the meal you have disposed of under the generic name of “hash.” The commonness of this fault does not excuse it.

Never fail in bowing gracefully when abandoning the table, and, in lighting your cigar, never strike a match on your hostess’s back. Be keenly observant of your well-bred neighbors, and you will at last learn to avoid these little breaches of etiquette that are so painstakingly enumerated for your cultivation.