Seating

“ In seating one's self at table, assume a comfortable position, neither so close as to be awkward, nor so far away as to endanger the clothing by dropping food in its passage from table to lips. Sit upright, and do not bend over to take each mouthful of food.
If a gentleman is accompanied by a lady, he should draw her chair out from the table, and, when she is seated, assist her in putting it back in position, unless in some public dining place, where this office will be assumed by a waiter. ”

“ In this seat, the one farther from her as she went up the aisle, were a man and a woman; in the nearer seat, facing this pair and sitting next the window, was a second woman—a girl rather—all three of them, she deduced from the seating arrangement, being members of the same party. A suitcase rested upon the cushions alongside the younger woman. ”

“ Imagination came with lamp-like eyes, a bright and bold beauty, seating me at one bound or flight in the midst of my family, enjoying all the comforts of civilized life, throwing me into the arms of my mother, indulging in her warm embrace. ”

“ The visitor, evincing some nervousness, rises quickly to his feet, follows the servant up the hall, and is ushered into a parlor of regal dimensions, on the right. His eye falls upon one solitary occupant, who rises from a lounge of oriental richness, and advances towards him with an air of familiarity their conditions seem not to warrant. Having greeted the visitor, and bid him be seated (he takes his seat, shyly, beside the door) , the lady resumes her seat in a magnificent chair. ”

“ When you are entering a concert room, or the box of a theatre, walk before your companion up the aisle, until you reach the seats you have secured, then turn, offer your hand to her, and place her in the inner seat, taking the outside one yourself; in going out, if the aisle is too narrow to walk two abreast, you again precede your companion until you reach the lobby, where you turn and offer your arm to her. ”

“ The seat on the sofa is the seat of honor, and if a lady of inferior rank has arrived first and occupied that place, she rises immediately and resigns it on seeing her superior enter the room; so that a captain’s wife will offer the seat to a major’s wife, and a major’s wife to a general’s wife, and so on. The white-gloved diener throws open the doors of the dining-room ten minutes after the arrival of the guests, and the guests have the privilege of speaking to each other at the table if an introduction has failed in any case in the salon. ”

“ Each hall is furnished with roomy seats for the accommodation of the audience; a raised platform at the farther end, upon which stands a marble table, and a cushioned seat, something like a capacious sofa, serves for the accommodation of the speakers or instructors. ”

“ But, sir, you talk about the life of a chair not being altogether unpleasant. Perhaps not, for an easy chair, so nicely cushioned as you are. Every time our owner sits down in your arms she says, 'Well, this is just the most comfortable seat in the world!' But nobody ever praises me. If a neighbor drops in and takes me or one of my fellows, the mistress just says, 'Don't take that uncomfortable chair,' and immediately offers one of these cane-seats. ”

“ And every one has an equal chance of obtaining a share of the nicest articles on the table. What is most desirable is to have a seat in the vicinity of agreeable people, and you will more frequently find them about the middle, or lower end of the table, than at the top—that being the place usually most coveted by the least genteel of the guests. We have seen the Chief Magistrate of the Union, “the ruler of millions,” simply take a seat near the door, at the lower end of a hotel-table, in Philadelphia, having arrived unexpectedly. ”

“ For, staring straight in front of me, I beheld the seat of the old stone bench slowly and cautiously and almost noiselessly rising to an upright position, propelled by a hand and an arm in a dark sleeve, plainly visible in the moonlight! ”

“ If there should be any preference with regard to seats, one suggestion is that a lady should be seated on a couch or sofa, unless advanced in years, when she should be asked to accept an easy chair; an elderly gentleman should be treated in the same manner. If a young lady should be occupying a particularly comfortable seat, she must at once arise and offer it to an older lady entering the room. ”

“ There are others in the car who occupy whole seats, and who could certainly move more easily than I. Were I the only one, I would willingly resign my seat, for the accommodation of the lady.”
“I think you shouldn’t ask him to move,” said a gentleman who sat with another on an opposite seat. “A man with but one leg ought to have some show in the world.” ”

“ The houses of the rich, while not cleanly and not well furnished, always have one large room in which stands a ring of chairs with a rug in the center of the floor and a cuspidor by each seat. You are ushered in and seated in one of these low square chairs, usually cane seated. After the courtesies of the day and the hostess’s comments on the fineness of your clothing, refreshments are brought in,—cigars, cigarettes, wine, cake, and preserved cocoanut. Sometimes American beer is added as possibly more acceptable than the wine. ”

“ The right-hand side of the seat should be at least two feet longer than the left-hand side, or else the seat will look too much like a family pew, which cognomen one of my friends is rude enough to give to my present seat, but arranged with the ends of an uneven length, the seat looks like nothing save what it is—a remarkably comfortable lounge, where one can either sit and read or talk, and it forms an extremely pretty addition to any room. ”

“ Then you may turn off towards the young people, and take a seat among them, with that agreeable expression of sympathy on your face, which encourages conversation.
On entering the dining-room, you must use your eyes to discover which part of the table is considered the most honorable. Try to seat yourself among the least important portion [Pg 65] of the company, unless desired by the lady or gentleman of the house to take a particular seat. ”

“ In parties of four persons, two men and two women, the men ordinarily occupy the outside seats, with the women between them, the hostess next to the male guest, the woman guest next to the host. If the seats are toward the side of the theater, where there is a preference as to view, the host may go in first, thus taking the least attractive seat. Every effort should be made to engage seats early so that they will all be well placed. ”

“ And furthermore we solemnly pledged ourselves to have no more than thirteen at the table, and that, as one and another died, his chair and place at the table should be kept for him, and that the vacant chair should receive all the attention which would be given to it if a living person occupied the seat. ”

“ We crowd in and select our seats on the side from the sun, if it should come out. Father turns over the seat in front, that it may face the other one, lays his shawl in the corner, hangs up the basket containing our lunch, sits down, pulls off his glove with his teeth, thrusts his hand under his duster, draws out and looks at his watch, shuts it with a snap, and says indistinctly, through the fingers of his glove:
“It will be fifteen minutes before we start.”
People continue to arrive and crowd in, singly and in parties. ”

“ The arranging of the seats at the dinner table is a delicate matter, as the rule of precedence has to be observed, and inattention to the rule, by placing a wrong seat for a gentleman or lady who is entitled to a higher place, may be considered as a slight. ”

“ This agreeable seat is surrounded with so many pleasing walks, which are struck out of a wood, in the midst of which the house stands, that one can hardly ever be weary of rambling from one labyrinth of delight to another. ”

“ It is not pleasant to be a guest in a house where 27you perceive that your hostess is continually and fretfully on the watch, lest some almost imperceptible injury should accrue to the furniture. We have known ladies who were always uneasy when their visiters sat down on a sofa or an ottoman, and could not forbear inviting them to change their seats and take chairs. We suppose the fear was that the more the damask-covered seats were used, the sooner they would wear out. ”

“ Deference is so far paid to European prejudice that we sit in chairs, but I confess that when I am to eat with my fingers I prefer to sit on the ground—the position in a chair is too formal for what is to follow. When we are seated, a servant brings water in a basin and ewer, and a towel, and we wash our right hands—the left hand is not to be used. ”

“ We had no books large enough to build the seat of a chair appreciably higher; and to sit on our thick medical book and a stack of smaller ones would be to ask for a couple of broken ribs.
The typewriter seemed to be the perfect solution. It's a portable, and, enclosed in its case, makes a solid seat. I put it on the chair in the kitchen, sat on top of it, and found that I could see the highway. Whenever I saw headlights of a car coming slowly I told Grant, and he put down his paper to go out after it. ”

“ Fresh looking wicker chairs, with large comfortable seats and sheltering hoods, stand in front of the hotels and at the water’s edge, and at a trifling cost, offer rest to the weary pedestrian, and protection to the shy lovers who seek to escape the embarrassing gaze of the public. ”

“ Every seat was full in every car but one—one seat beside a pretty, fashionably-dressed young lady was vacant. I stood up against the wood-box and looked at that seat, as a boy looks at a jar of peppermint-drops in a candy-store window. ”

“ To seat one's self, sit on the bench with back to the table; gracefully raising the lower limbs, right about face, your seat acting as a pivot for the body, swing over quickly, drop the feet beneath the table, and you are ready for preliminaries. ”

“ In her seat, she most commonly sits in some lazy posture;—either with her elbows upon her desk, her head leaning upon her hands, or with her seat tipped forwards or backwards. When she has occasion to leave her seat, it is in a sauntering, lingering gait;—perhaps some trick is contrived on the way, for exciting the mirth of her companions. ”

“ I do not advise a window-seat unless we have two windows, because no one should ever sit in the dining-room unless it is positively necessary to do so, and, moreover, it is well to use the space for a writing-table and chair in any but a really large{117} house, and that is a place about which I am not writing at this moment. ”

“ If other visitors are announced, and you have already remained as long as courtesy requires, wait till they are seated, and then rise from your chair, take leave of your hostess, and bow politely to the newly arrived guests. You will, perhaps, be urged to remain, but, having once risen, it is always best to go. There is always a certain air of gaucherie in resuming your seat and repeating the ceremony of leave-taking. ”

“ Of course, I cannot ask her to vacate it, although that seat by the ordinary courtesies of travel is mine by right of pre-possession and as the receptacle of my belongings. The next seat behind is occupied by a single lady, and there’s room for another person. ”

“ On the side directly opposite the door by which the visitor enters, several yards of the seat are covered with matting, on which the visitor being seated, the man who shows the gallery, whispers, with the mouth close to the wall, near the door, at the distance of one hundred and forty feet from the visitor, who hears his words in a loud voice, seemingly at 660his ear. The mere shutting of the door produces a sound to those on the opposite seat like violent claps of thunder. ”

“ On inquiring into the cause, we find that, instead of sitting as tailors do in this country, a hole is cut in the table, and a seat is placed within it; so that their position, while working, becomes nearly the same as that of persons who stoop while sitting at a table. ”

“ Chairs and tables spring up like mushrooms in the roadway, among which too few waiters distribute those very inexpensive refreshments which seem to be purchased rather for the right to the seat that they confer than for any stimulation. ”

“ And in the Perilous Seat, at the high centre of the table, a name was also written, whereat they marvelled greatly, for no living man had ever yet dared sit upon that seat, save one, and him a flame leaped forth and drew down under earth, so that he was no more seen. ”

“ If you go to see a show on the nod you'll be found a comfortable seat in a good place; but if you pay the chances are the ticket clerk will tell you a lie, and you'll have to hustle for standing room. ”

“ Miserable chairs without backs are the comfortable seats. Below is the amphitheater, arranged exactly like circus seats. Different prices are charged and the cheapest is the sunny side, where all the poor sit. ”

“ Sofas, tables, and chairs in our sitting-room are made of buffalo horns, very cleverly pieced together, but torturing the senses with suggestions of impalement. Sitting or standing, one felt insecure. ”

“ Personally, I wonder whether it is wise to put the gentry of the pen in seats from which they often hear with difficulty, and see without accuracy, in rows of seats normally belonging to the pit, and merely posing, pro hoc vice, as stalls, and situate in the headachy region underneath the dress circle.
According to my cousin, the first-night deadheads, as a body, are unpunctual and unappreciative. They chatter a good deal and seem more interested in the audience than the play, and might well be replaced by the many people who would be glad to plank down their money for a seat. ”

“ The head-waiter is usually at hand to arrange seats for the strangers, and he will attend to you. Persons not accustomed to hotels, frequently show a great craving for the seats near the head of the table. This is foolish. There are no places of honour; neither are the eatables better at one part of the table than another. ”