solid doors, especially for chamber closets, for dressing-rooms, or other apartments communicating in suites, and not infrequently a heavy curtain is an ample barrier between the principal rooms.  It may be well to supplement them, with light sliding doors, to be used in an emergency, but which being rarely seen, may be exceedingly simple and inexpensive, having no resemblance to the rest of the finish in the room.  For that matter such conformity is not required of any of the doors, though it is reckoned by builders as one of the cardinal points in hard-wood finish that veneered doors must ‘match’ the finish of the rooms in which they show.  This is absurd.  Doors are under no such obligations.  They may be of any sort of wood, metal or fabric.  They may be veneered, carved, gilded, ebonized, painted, stained or ‘decorated.’  To finish and furnish a room entirely with one kind of wood, making the wainscot, architraves, cornices, doors and mantels, the chairs, tables, piano, bookcase, or sideboard, all of mahogany, oak, or whatever may be chosen—­the floors, too, perhaps, and the picture frames—­is strictly orthodox and eminently respectable; but like the invariable use of ‘low tones’ in decorating walls and ceilings, it betrays a sort of helplessness and lack of courage.  Discords in sound, color and form are, indeed, always hateful, and they are sure to be produced when ignorance or accident strikes the keys.  Yet, on the other hand, neutrality and monotone are desperately tedious, and it is better to strive and fail than to be hopelessly commonplace.”

[Illustration:  INSIDE BARRIERS.]

[Illustration:  COMMON UGLINESS.]

[Illustration:  SIMPLE GRACE.]

This advice concerned not the doors alone, but referred to other queries that had been raised as to the interior finish generally.

One evening Jack came home and found Jill “in the dumps,” or as near as she ever came to that unhappy state of mind, the consequence, as it appeared, of Aunt Melville’s zeal in her behalf.

“Why should these plans worry you?” said Jack.  “I thought common sense was your armor and decision your shield against Aunt Melville’s erratic arrows of advice.”

“My armor is intact, but, for a moment, I have lowered my shield and it has cost me an effort to raise it again, I supposed my mind was fixed beyond the possibility of change, but this is a wonderfully taking plan.  At first I felt that if our lot had not been bought and the foundation actually begun we would certainly begin anew and have a house something like these plans.  Then it occurred to me that in building a house that is to be our home as long as we live, perhaps, it would be the height of absurdity to tie ourselves down to one little spot on the broad face of this great, beautiful world and live in a house that will never be satisfactory, just because we happen to have this bit of land in our possession and have spent upon it a few hundred dollars.”