DEAR MISS MANNERS: I would appreciate your advice on the appropriate etiquette for flowers or gifts that are received from an anonymous sender. Should one attempt to identify the sender so that appropriate thanks can be expressed?

GENTLE READER: While a thank-you letter cannot reasonably be expected in response to an anonymous gesture, one should attempt to identify the sender for another reason:

One is dying from curiosity.

Mind you, Miss Manners has never considered curiosity an excuse for running around asking embarrassing questions, and any inquiries you make will embarrass anyone who thinks -- or who thinks you think -- that he ought to have made such a gesture. But she promises that if you start shooting bashful little smiles at the likely candidates, one of them will confess. And one or two more may head for the flower shop.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: When I was 5 years old, my father was transferred to England and our family lived there for about three years. We all adopted many of the English customs, especially us kids, because we wanted to "fit in."

Well, 40 years later, while cutting meat I still eat with my fork in the left hand, tines pointed down, knife in right hand, and take a bite of food without transferring fork to the right hand or turning it over. My wife thinks that the upside-down fork insertion into the mouth is crude and looks like I'm shoveling food like Jethro Bodine eating his cereal on "The Beverly Hillbillies."

I've tried to explain to her that the English have been using silverware a whole lot longer than Americans and that the American method of cutting a bite, putting down the knife, switching hands with the fork, then taking a bite with the right hand is way less efficient. (I'm an engineer and do tend to overanalyze things!) She should be glad I don't still mix my mashed potatoes and peas together and spread them on the back of the fork.

I would guess that the Brits, on the whole, are way more couth than us Yanks and that the left-handed fork is the preferred method in the etiquette book. There's nothing really riding on this, but a ruling in my favor from a person of your stature would sure help. I don't get to win many arguments.

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners hopes that in your professional life, you obtain the facts of a case before you attempt to analyze it. It helps win arguments.

You have not done so here. Leaving aside the general manners comparison (where do you get your notions about British gentility -- from the goings-on of their royalty?), you are in error about the British method of eating being older than the American method. Early European immigrants brought with them the eating methods prevailing in Europe at the time, and their American descendents have continued to use them. It was the Europeans who streamlined their method -- or, as your wife would observe, made it cruder. Efficiency is not considered a virtue in dining.

Etiquette books do allow the European method to Europeans, although a 3-year stint in childhood is not much of a claim. No self-respecting American would advise others to abandon their perfectly good tradition in an attempt to seem British.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: An acquaintance of mine recently informed me and others, through e-mail, that our children would not be invited to her child's birthday party due to the large number of possible guests. She was very apologetic and hoped that this would not harm our relationship.

I had thought not to invite her child to my own child's party for similar reasons. Should I now inform her so, as she did for me, or am I right in thinking that this approach is a little presumptuous and rude?

GENTLE READER: The announcement that you -- or in this case, your child -- did not make the cut when a guest list was scaled back to only the most desirable guests is not Miss Manners' idea of a charming social form. You did not seem to care for it, either. So why would you consider adopting it?

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am moving from a spacious house in a farming town to a tiny apartment in a big city and need to radically purge my possessions. I have been calling friends about items they might want and asking them to reimburse me for shipping with a rough estimate of what that would cost (I am not covering boxes and packing supplies -- just the post office cost).

I also wanted to have a "giveaway" for people in the area, where I would have people over for wine and cheese and have everything in one room that needs a good home and let people take whatever they wish. But a friend thought this was odd, that I should have a box for donations toward moving expenses or something, so people didn't feel awkward.

Is it OK to ask people to cover postage of a not-gift/gift like this? Do I need to put out a box for donations? I really love many of these items, and knowing they are going to a friend where they will give pleasure makes it much easier to part with things.

GENTLE READER: Your friend's idea would spoil your charming one, changing a generous party into something like a yard sale. But Miss Manners is afraid she is going to have to spoil your fun anyway.

She begs you not to give that party. That is because you may end up wishing you were dead. The dead at least do not have to watch people they care about squabbling over their possessions. Families have enough trouble dividing up estates in a civil fashion without your putting a miscellaneous collection of friends to the test.

It would be far better to invite your friends to choose from among the available items, one at a time. It is not unreasonable for them to assume shipping or moving costs for the items they take, which is quite a different thing from their assuming your own moving costs as the price of accepting what you so gracefully want to give. Finding a way to reciprocate your kindness is their problem, not yours.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am in my mid-40s and thinking of getting a facelift. It so happens that most of my friends are either colleagues in their early to mid-30s with children under 5, and friends in their 50s and 60s who are aging au naturel and don't believe in plastic surgery.

Do you have any recommendations on witty lines to deliver post-facelift to people who can't relate to this choice?

GENTLE READER: While you are thinking, have you thought of not telling people that you might be getting a facelift? Or, if you must explain your absence, leaving it vague by saying that you are having some minor surgery that you do not wish to discuss?

Of course not. You want to be in their faces, which you know may result in their insulting you to your face, and so you want Miss Manners to help you insult them back to their (aging) faces.

She can't face it. Should anyone say something unpleasant, she recommends replying, "Well, if I had looked as good as you do, I wouldn't have had to do it."

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