Coffee Ranks Tea

Getting its R.O.T.C. students ready for active duty after graduation, the University of Wyoming has not neglected their wives and fiancees. Last week, 22 young women turned out to hear a guest specialist, Mrs. Dorothy Irwin, wife of retired Brigadier General C. L. Irwin, outline the contours of Army etiquette. Stressing the importance of the service wife's role ("Wives are even mentioned in efficiency reports about their husbands"), bouncy, silver-haired Dorothy Irwin quickly got down to cases:

"The first thing you and your husband must do is make a call. In my day you always called on the post's commanding officer. But in some cases, he is too busy to see you, and you call on the unit commander. Check with the adjutant; he always knows everything. Leave your calling cards on this visit. You leave one card (because a lady never calls on a gentleman), and your husband leaves two (he calls on both husband and wife). If the commander is a bachelor, a lady doesn't call on him.

"At a formal dinner you have no artificial flowers or lace. All your candles are white. You must have menservants, no waitresses . . . and no bread and butter plates are used (there are so many courses you don't have enough room for bread). No toothpicks, please. That is absolutely unforgivable."

After the lecture, Mrs. Irwin showed her listeners a semiformal dinner setting that she had arranged as a model. Then she remembered an inviolate rule: "I forgot to tell you, girls, coffee ranks tea." Explanation: when coffee and tea are served in the living room (never, never in the dining room), the top-ranking officer's wife pours the coffee, the subordinate's wife the tea.

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