are wide, and in any case relieve the wood segment by ornamental cutting or some other device, otherwise you will have a weak and poverty-stricken effect.  Or you may use a straight lintel of stone, taking care to build a conspicuous, relieving arch above it of stone or colored brick.  You will get the idea from the sketches, and see that there is room for endless variety of expression and ornament without violating any of the first principles, which you will do if you try to cover a square-headed opening with a “straight arch” of brick, or leave a light, horizontal stone cap without a protecting arch above it.

[Illustration:  Square heads with brick caps.]

LETTER XII.

From John.

The weakness and sham of brickwork.

My Dear Architect:  You must have had a brick in your hat when you launched your last letter.  I suppose there’s no doubt that brick walls will stand thunder and lightning in the shape of Chicago fire and Boston gunpowder better than anything else.  In fact, I’ve always had a notion that if there are any houses in a certain place where they don’t need them to keep out the cold, they must be made of brick, Milton’s gorgeous testimony to the contrary notwithstanding.  But when you undertake to show up the softness and beauty of brickwork, you soar a little too high for me.  If our masons would only make walls that are able to bear their own weight; not use more than half as much mortar as brick, and that made of sand instead of dirt; if they would build chimney-flues that will carry the smoke to the top of the building, instead of leaving it to ooze out around the window-frames a dozen feet away, as I once saw it in a costly building belonging to one of our ex-governors, and remember that a wooden joist running square across a chimney-flue is pretty sure to get up a bigger draught than most of us care for; if they wouldn’t fill up the inside of the wall with bricks that it isn’t safe to drop for fear they can never be picked up again; in short, if they’d do the work that can’t be seen half as well as what is in plain sight, I’d never say a word about beauty, I wouldn’t even ask for those elegant caps the masons are so fond of poking out over windows.  You can find at least ten thousand such in Springfield.  Some folks paint them, sprinkle sand into the paint, and then go on their wicked way rejoicing in the notion that they have told such a cunning lie as “no feller can find out.”

Now and then the corner of a brick building is cobbled up into blocks and polished off in the same style.  If these are some of the beauties of brickwork, I pray you have me excused.  If you have anything better to offer, go ahead, I’m open to conviction; would rather be knocked down by an argument than a brickbat any time.