the editors for permission to publish plans or elevations of a successful building by one of them meet with no response.  Then the editor takes two or three days from his abundant leisure, and calls personally upon the professional magnate.  The latter seems pleased to see him, shows him the drawings of the building in question, appears to be gratified at his praises, and readily agrees to allow the publication of the plan and perspective.  The editor lays these drawings aside, and proposes to take them with him, but the architect politely insists that he cannot allow him to burden himself, and promises that he will send them immediately by express.  The editor returns to his desk, and arranges space for the expected drawings in the next issue, but they do not arrive.  Two or three weeks go by, and he then writes to the distinguished architect, to remind him of his promise.  The letter brings neither the drawings nor any other response, and, after a final entreaty, as unsuccessful as the rest, he abandons his efforts, to begin them again with a fresh subject, who proves as slippery as the other.

* * * * *

After a good many years of such struggles, we should be inclined to say that we would trouble ourselves no further, and that American architects who are capable of carrying out important work successfully, and do not want other people to know it, may please themselves in the matter, were it not that, in a journal which now intends to show what is done all over the world, we most earnestly wish to have American, architecture properly represented.  We are sure that the best of it is equal to the best anywhere, and we want to be able to prove it.  The treatment of our modern mercantile and business structures, particularly those ten or twelve stories in height, is more successful than any other work of the kind in the world; the planning of our office-buildings is unrivalled anywhere, and some of our apartment-houses will bear comparison with the best in Paris—­which are the best anywhere—­and are more interesting, on account of the more complex character of the services which we must provide for.  Besides this, many details of American construction, such as the encased iron framing-and isolated pier foundations of the Chicago architects, and the heating and ventilating systems in use everywhere here, are far in advance of foreign practice, and we want our foreign readers to see this with their own eyes, and to give their American brethren their proper rank in the profession.  To do this we must have the material, and we appeal once more to American architects who have it to furnish it, and to those who do not have it themselves, but who know where it is to be found, to get it for us, or to put us in the way of getting it.  Plans, elevations, perspectives, sketches, photographs, negatives, descriptions, whatever is good, we want to show, for the benefit and reputation of the profession in America far more