Ladies' Summer Styles

Mrs. Mary Gordon Gray writes from New York about the coming styles of clotMng for the summer : Last summer everybody decked herself out in a suit of plaid wool goods, which, thougli soft and light, were certainly warm in July and August. For two or three years previous, heavy gros graiii silks and the useful butinexpressibly warm grenadines, solid black and heavily trimmed, were the regulation costumes for fashionably attired ladies, no matter what the thermometer might indícate, or how imminent the danger of hydrophobia. True, black grenadine will probably be the standard dress for summer again, particularly for large citios, but it will be used largely for iting and church, while cool, pretty cambrics, percales and ginghams or the delightfully simple old-fasbioned lawns j and organdíes, will be seen for less dressy occasions. To meet the increased demand for wash goods, American manufacturers have quite surpassed themselves, and given us the most reflned and choice J variety of calicóes, cambrics and cales ever put into market. Not only in ! quality and finish do these goods excel those of former years, but in combinations of color and pattern, somo of them being really artistic. When it is added that good cah'co can bo bought for six j cents, and that the choicest of prints command only eight and ten cents per yard ; that very pretty percales are retailing at twelve cents, and that all cot ton goods are reduced to surprisingly low prices, it needs no elaboration of speech to prove that economy promises to be a possibility in the dressing for 1876. Furnishing houses are already busy preparing suits for spring, and it is pleasant to fiñd that simplicity will be a prominent feature of these "svash dresses. The prediction that overskirts would be entirely abandoned this season for simple suits appears without foundaiioD, though the tendenoy is strongly toward i polonaises and long " PrincesBe " habits j for rich materials.