Place a salt cellar and a pepper pot in each corner of an imaginary square of which the plant is the center. Arrange the side-table—or sideboard, if you have no side-table—with everything extra on it that will be needed during the meal, so that you will never have to open a drawer while you are serving it. Put on this table, in nice order, so that it will look attractive, the dessert plates, on each of which is a finger bowl with a doily under it; also any cold plates such as salad plates, if they are to be used, and any extra forks, spoons, sauce ladles, etc., that will be required. Fill the finger bowls a third full of water and place a fork and a spoon on the doily, one on one side, the other on the other, of the finger bowl. Have also on the side-table a plate of bread, the pieces all cut the same size as those already on the dining-table. Set a pitcher of iced water in a convenient place in pantry or dining-room. Arrange a tray with the after-dinner coffee-cups on it and the bowl of lump sugar and sugar tongs in the center. Put an after-dinner coffee spoon on each saucer. Have this in pantry. (The only spoon that is ever put with the forks and knives by the plates on the table is the soup spoon. Teaspoons for grapefruit, for bouillon, tea, coffee, etc., are always put on the plate or saucer on which these foods and drinks are served.) When the dining- and side-tables are set and the first course ready to come into the dining-room, fill the tumblers with iced water. Go into the pantry and pour each soup plate half full of soup. If it is the custom of the family to use a musical Japanese gong to announce meals, strike it two or three light taps. If they don’t use one, then go to the mistress wherever she is and say quietly, “Dinner is served, Mrs. ——.” When every one is seated, take a plate of soup in each hand and place each plate in turn in front of each person, laying it on the dinner plate that is already there, serving the older members of the family first, if there are children, otherwise going right around the table, always laying it down from the right side of each person. When the soup course is finished and the second course is in the pantry, bring a hot plate in your left hand and, taking up the serving plate, with the soup plate on it, in your right, replace it with the fresh hot one, doing this from the right side of each person; going, in this way, all around the table till all have hot, clean plates. Then bring in the platter of meat, placing it in front of the carver with the carving knife, which has been sharpened before the meal, at his right and the fork at his left side. Put the gravy boat and ladle at his right. Stand at the left of the carver with an extra hot plate in your hand and, taking the plate with meat on it, put the empty, hot plate in its place. This gives the carver time to cut another slice and have it ready when you come back with the next empty plate.