Excerpt from Table Decorations and Delicacies: A Complete Hand-Book for the Hostess To the Hostess: Every book, however unpretentious in character, owes its origin to an inspiration. If practical, it has a distinct object. This picture book for housekeepers is designed to give some sort of permanence to childhood memories as well as to ideas garnered in later days. These ideas are set forth with the hope that they may be of value to many women who are too busy to give much time to the decorative side of housekeeping. The illustrations show how easily one may brighten and elaborate the table every day and especially upon high days and holidays. So much has been written with regard to the actual laying of the cloth and serving of the dinner that it seems useless to enter upon the subject here. Suffice it to say, fashion has reverted to the old style of having very little upon the table. And, again, it is no longer desirable to serve a dinner of many courses. It may be advisable to state that this is not, strictly speaking, a recipe book. On the other hand, a number of recipes as well as hints for cooking have been given when the dishes mentioned were old-fashioned or in any way unusual. The greater number of the pictures represent cold dishes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.