The trouble with our manager is, he is not making as much money as he expected, and he is looking at the table and at my regularly rendered account of cost per meal to find the reason why. Another of those blue spells has come upon us which often occur early in August when it turns unseasonably cold and there has been two days of steady rain. The people sit and mope and have no appetites for meals, set tired of themselves and want to get up and go, arid some do go; many resort houses are almost emptied by the occurrence of two rainy days. Not only that, but those who are free are often curious to try a number of different places during the season and although the average of goers and comers may be equal in the end, there are times when an hotel is almost depopulated for no reason but that it is the ebb before the flood, and it happens so.

The way it began between the manager and myself was this: You see the manager at such a small place as this has to be a gentleman of all-work; he is re-quired to look sweet, and play croquette and tennis part of the time, but he also acts as host, clerk, cashier, bookkeeper, paymaster and part steward. As long as there was nobody in the house and no bills to collect we will suppose the owner of the place put up the money for expenses, but when there began to be some receipts, the manager was told to go it alone, and I expect he has been counting: over his money. Day after to-morrow he has to pay all his help, the tenth being the day of the month almost always ob-served in that way, for by that time the monthly bills which fall due on the first have been collected and the indebtedness to the butcher and market men has been liquidated, then when the employees are paid he can count over his balance on and, or at least ask where it is. If our crowd had kept up to about forty-five souls he would have been away ahead and would have asked me no questions; as it is he has been asked on every trip to town to bring back a couple of cans of mushrooms, or a dozen lemons, or a can of shrimps and bottle of oil and so forth and while he always brings them he hesitates and asks first if they are really necessary, with a great stress laid upon the "really." Now, the butcher at the Glen know.; we get our meats by express and never go to him except in a case of necessity; consequently, he puts his finger in our manager's eye every time he sells him a piece of meat. This afternoon he sold the manager - who is proud to say he does not know one piece of meat from another - a piece of the neck of beef for a roast, and flour briskets of mutton for racks and loins to cut into chops, and when I explained the manager only laughed, and said it was good enough, and he would like to make some money anyhow,, and there was no use of being so particular Then he went on to ask why the dinners now were costing sixteen and seventeen cents a plate according to my own showing; whereas, for two or three weeks they ran from seven to eleven cents only, and why the same cheap scale could not be always preserved. There is no reason why. He is in the right. Ten-cent dinners such as we had three weeks back could be continued all the season, and give satisfaction. However, I have not been under any instruction or restraint in this matter. If the owner of the place has had any thought about the matter, it has probably been only to see what I would do, and in what ways this summer's style would differ from the household style of keeping up a table. John, the keeper, has been comparing the frugal management of provisions this summer, which leaves him no perquisites with the waste of former years, which gave him a large pork crop, and he thinks it extreme niggardliness.

The manager, who was not here last year, is comparing the seventeen -cents-a-plate of to-day, with the ten-cents-a-plate of last month, and it seems to him a change to extravagance. There is no room for a reasonable doubt that there was much wasted last year through want of knowing what to do with it, and through cooking too much as it lakes to make our most expensive meals now. The extravagance of the dinners, such as it is, arises from the use of more meat in the soups and sauces, the use of sea-fish, which the butcher sends according to a custom which prevails, at eleven cents, and which costs 12 1/2, delivered; whereas, the lake fish costs but 9; and the cooking in fillets entails a loss of bulk and requires more pounds gross for a given number of people than if cooked plain, with the bones in. There has been an indulgence in a few cans of pineapple, and other fruits in syrup, a few olives, a bottle of wine, a mincing up of pickles, a rather more lavish use of eggs and crackers for frying, and of lard for the same, a little waste in the matter of potatoes in fancy forms, the new potatoes being dearer than the old, and all the odd cents counted up together have swelled the sum total. There has not been a corresponding increase in the cost of breakfast and supper, the latter, indeed, being half made up of the meats and other remains from dinner, and being quite an inexpensive meal.

But what are we here for? Nut alon.e to see how cheaply one summer hotel can be kept, but to find out how much it costs to live well. The custom mentioned in connection with the butcher is, that one who supplies a number of hotels occasionally get a refrigerator car full of special kinds of provisions, which he sends around, to his first-class customers, without waiting for the order, assuming that a novely will be welcome in the height of the season.