question,--folding-doors they used to be, and, truly, I'm not sure
that the rollers are any improvement on the hinges,--there is
something dreadfully barny about sliding-doors. Why do you want
either? You have one room which you call the parlor, supposed to be
the best in the house, as to its location, its finish, its furniture,
and its use. Three of its walls are handsomely frescoed, curtained,
and decorated with pictures or other ornaments; the fourth is one huge
barricade of panel-work. When the two parts are closed you have a
constant fancy of rheumatic currents stealing through the cracks, and
an ever-present fear lest they should suddenly fly open with
"impetuous recoil, grating harsh thunder" on their wheels, and not
exactly letting Satan in, but everything in the room fall out; an idle
fear, for they can only be shoved asunder by dint of much pushing and
pulling, especially if they are warped by having one side exposed to
more heat than the other, as usually happens. Being at last opened by
hook or crook, another room is revealed, commonly smaller, more shabby
in appearance, a sort of poor-relation attachment, spoiling the
completeness and artistic unity of the larger one. By care you may
avoid something of this; if you follow the fashion, you will have the
most of it. When the two rooms are twins, alike in every respect, they
are really one large room, fitted up, for economical reasons, with a
movable screen in the centre, by means of which you may warm
(excepting rheumatic currents as above) and use one half at a time.
But call things by their right names. Don't talk grandly about your
two parlors when you mean two halves of one. Have wide doors, by all
means, not only between rooms but into main hall,--four, six, or eight
feet, if the rooms are so wide and high that they shall not be
disproportionately large. Then, if you must have the whole broadside
of sliding or folding doors, let the two rooms thus connected be of
different styles but equal richness,--different, that they shall not