Note 39-* — INVITATIONS TO DINNER

Le Grand Sommelier, or CHIEF BUTLER, in former times was expected to be especially accomplished in the art of folding table linen, so as to lay his napkins in different forms every day: these transformations are particularly described in Rose’s Instructions for the Officers of the Mouth, 1682, p. 111, &c. “To pleat a napkin in the form of a cockle-shell double”—“in the form of hen and chickens”—“shape of two capons in a pye”—or “like a dog with a collar about his neck”—and many others equally whimsical.