If the summer cottage to which the husband returns at night, is not the most satisfactory arrangement for the mother, she must blame herself or the civilization in which she lives. The sole argument in favor of passing the summer at a hotel is that the wife and mother escapes thereby the cares of housekeeping, too often so severe during the rest of the year that the prospect of not being obliged to order dinner for three months causes her to wake in the night and laugh hysterically. Formality and conventional ceremony are the lurking enemies of our American summer life, who threaten to deprive our mothers and daughters of the rest and vacation from the tension, excitement, and worry begotten by nine months of active domestic duties. Simplicity of living ought to be the controlling warm-weather maxim of every household where the woman at the head of the establishment does the housekeeping, as nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of ten thousand in America do. It may be argued that greater simplicity in living all the year round would enable the wife and mother to do without a vacation. Possibly. But unfortunately for her the trend of the tide is all the other way. Besides, simplicity is such a difficult word to conjure with. Her interests have become so varied that the wear and tear is quite as likely to proceed from new mental strivings as from a multiplicity of sheer domestic duties. At least there seems to be no immediate prospect that she will be less tired in the spring, however exemplary her intentions, and it therefore behooves her not to allow the wave of increasing luxury to bear her on its crest through the summer and land her in her town-house in October a physical and mental wreck. The external attractiveness of the modern summer cottage, with its pleasing angles and comely stains, is easily made an excuse for an artistic interior and surroundings to match. But artistic beauty in summer can readily be produced without elaboration, and at comparatively slight cost, if we only choose to be content with simple effects. The bewitching charm of the summer girl, if analyzed, proves to be based on a few cents a yard and a happy knack of combining colors and trifles. Why need we be solicitous to have all the paraphernalia of winter-life--meals with many courses, a retinue of servants, wines, festal attire, and splendid entertainments? While we rejoice that the promiscuous comradeship of hotel life has largely given place at Newport, Bar Harbor, Lenox, and our other fashionable watering-places to the pleasant protection of the cottage home, is it not seriously deplorable that simplicity is too often lost sight of? To be comfortable is one thing, to be swathed in luxury or to be tortured by ceremony all the time is another. It seems strange to many of us, who cannot choose precisely what we will do and where we will go in summer, that those who can so often select a mere repetition of mid-winter social recreation.