seem one room cut in two,--peers, that one shall not shame and cheapen
the other.

Doors are a great bother, at best. I wish they could be abolished.
They are always slamming, punching holes in the plastering with their
knobs, creaking on their hinges, bruising the piano, pinching babies'
fingers, and making old folks see stars when they get up in the night
to look for burglars. Heavy curtains are infinitely more graceful,
equally warm, and not half so stubbornly unmanageable. Then think of
entering a room. By her steps the goddess is revealed; but who can
walk like a goddess while forcing an entrance between two
sliding-doors, maybe wedging fast half-way through? How different
from passing in quiet dignity beneath the rich folds of overhanging
drapery! But I suppose we must leave all that to the Orientals, at
present.

"You would almost as soon give up the bay-windows!" Well, you might
e'en do worse than that. Now let your indignation boil. Bay-windows
are very charming things sometimes; sometimes they are nuisances. Some
have been so appropriate and altogether lovely that any pepper box
contrivance thrusting itself out from the main walls and looking three
ways for Sunday is supposed to be a bower of beauty, a perfect pharos
of observation, an abundant recompense for unmitigated ugliness and
inconvenience in the rest of the building. Truly, a well-ordered
bay-window will often change a gloomy, graceless room into a cheerful
and artistic one, but large, simple windows are sometimes rather to be
chosen than too much bay. In many, perhaps the majority, of cases, it
is wiser to extend the whole wall of the room in the form of a
half-hexagon or three sides of an octagon, costing no more, and
repaying the cost far more abundantly.