Unfortunately for women whose purses are limited in length and light in weight, there are few dishes which are at once inexpensive, convenient, elegant, and healthful, during that most trying of all seasons to the housekeeper's soul, ''the heated term.'' But salads combine all the above-mentioned qualities, and are, moreover, grateful to the most fastidious palate.

It takes brains and education to appreciate this fact, and in the country the farmer's wife or mother is convinced that a meal is not fit for ''folks '' to eat unless graced by ''something hearty.'' This "hearty" viand may be chipped beef, picked-np codfish (salt), or fried pork. The overwrought woman would open her eyes in incredulous astonishment if you were to suggest that salads would be cheaper, more wholesome, and certainly more palatable. Her only idea of cheap salad is of half-wilted lettuce-leaves, drenched in a mixture of rancid oil and vinegar, pepper and salt. Small wonder that her husband and sons "take no stock " therein !

The varieties of salad are numerous - meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, and vegetables all forming bases upon which the epicure's delight may be founded. On the other side of the Atlantic a dinner without salad is considered a culinary solecism, and it would be well for us Americans to do away with fries and pies, and turn our attention in the direction of "greens."

We will be surprised to find how "scraps" maybe utilized and made delicious. One country housewife, cumbered by many cares in the way of midsummer cookery, brought up one afternoon from the cellar a saucerful of cold pease, one of cold beets, one of beans, and two hard-boiled eggs, which had been left from breakfast, and wondered "what she was to do with these things, which were too little to use and too good to throw away.''

A city cousin and visitor, passing through the kitchen, which was bright and clean and cool, had a brilliant idea, and suggested that no fire be built in the freshly polished range before supper. They had already planned to have cold tea, which had been set aside in the refrigerator after the mid-day dinner. The city friend took matters into her own hands, and found that there were lettuce and berries in the garden, pot-cheese and cream in the cellar, plenty of crackers, bread and cake and lemons, with a box of sardines, in the closet. A boy was sent out to pick the berries and to gather lettuce, and in three-quarters of an hour the household was summoned to a repast which they pronounced the most delicious of the season. Sardines were daintily served, garnished with lemon ; a bowl, lined with crisp lettuce-leaves, was filled with a salad of pease, beans, and chopped beets, highly seasoned. Over these was poured a rich mayonnaise dressing. Two beets had been reserved from those put into the salad, and were skilfully cut by a sharp knife into star-shapes, and with the sliced hard eggs, laid upon the surface of the mayonnaise.

Each glass contained cracked ice, powdered sugar, and a slice of lemon, and was then filled with cold tea. Creamy pot-cheese, slices of light bread, and crisp crackers completed the first course, while fresh berries, drowned in rich cream, were served with the loaf of golden sponge cake.