To be separated for three months from one’s wife and children, except for a day or two once a fortnight, is scarcely an ideal domestic arrangement, in spite of the fact that it is more or less delightful for the dear ones to meet new people and see new scenes. The American father may not try very hard to leave his city home, but it must be admitted that he has been an amiable biped on the score of the summer question. He has been and is ready to suffer silently for the sake of his family and his business. But now that he has made up his mind at last that he prefers to leave his business for the sake of his family and his own health, the difficulties of sending them to a distance are more apparent to him. Ten or fifteen years ago it dawned upon him that the city in summer without his family was not the ideal spot his fancy had painted, and that the sea-side and country, especially the former, were, after all, the best place for an overworked, full-grown man on a summer’s afternoon. It dawned upon him, too, that there was sea-coast and country close at hand where he could establish his family and refresh himself at the end of every day’s work. Twenty-five years ago the marine and attractive suburban environs of our cities were substantially unappropriated. To-day they bristle with cottages, large and small, the summer homes of city men. Every available promontory, island, hill, nook, and crook, which commands a pleasing view or is visited by cooling breezes is, or soon will be, occupied. What can a busy man do better, if he can afford it, than buy or hire a cottage, as humble as you like, to which he can return in the afternoon to the bosom of his own family, and be comfortable and lazy until morning? From the domestic point of view this is assuredly the most satisfactory arrangement for the father, and the American paterfamilias, ever since the truth dawned upon him, has been prompt in recognizing the fact. He has builded, too, according to his taste, whim, and individual idiosyncrasies. A sea-side cottage within easy reach of town includes, to-day, every variety of shelter from a picturesque villa of the most super-civilized type to the hulk of a ship fitted up as a camping-out home. To a large extent, too, the hotel has been discarded in favor of the domestic hearth, even though the single chimney smokes so that tears are perpetually in the domestic eye. The well-to-do city man who comes to town every day appreciates that a hotel is a poor place for children; consequently the long piazzas, where the terrible infant forever used to abound, are now trodden chiefly by visitors from a distance and transients who have escaped from the city for a day in search of a sea-bath and a clam chowder.