On page 129 I submit a hurriedly executed sketch of one of our earliest adaptations of a Colonial house of the Grand Epoch. This house was designed in 1885 by some of our cleverest architects indeed, though it is extremely doubtful if they had any deeper purpose in it than to exploit a fashionable dwelling for Newport at the time. To-day, these same architects would do it very differently. On no account would they put two Palladian windows with huge sheets of plate glass in such close conjunction as is seen in the sketch imposing triplet windows with cornices, elaborated by PLATE LXVI. [Illustration: DOORWAY AT SHARON, CONN. “By evening I was so tired looking at fashionable architecture that my invitation to supper at Aunt Muriel’s was grateful beyond words. We had sugar-cured ham (cured on the place), home-made bread, toasted and buttered, Ceylon tea, brewed at table from an antique Dresden tea-caddie, old-fashioned raised cake, and honey as put up by the bees.”] applied ornament directly overhead. Such modern obtrusion would be relegated to their draughtsman who has set up in business for himself, and to whom they might direct the poorer-class client seeking a low-priced plan. Experience alone has taught these architects that the closer the adaptation up to a certain point, the greater the success. I do not believe that they ever think of expressing history in executing their designs. Certainly, they do not look upon their profession as eleemosynary to make the world a more beautiful world, a kindlier world, a happier world for mankind generally. The chances are they are still figuring very closely with American cunning and expediency for commercial martinets, whose favor means the largest commissions, and whose unwelcome personal influence we so often run across when least expecting in modern architecture, and which is sure to disenchant us with it. CHAPTER X ADAPTATION A representative architect in New York city has declared impressively, “We are no longer architects, but adapters!” To him, looking upon his own achievement and that of his contemporaries as well as the general tendency of the times in which we live, it seemed, indeed, he had framed an unimpeachable aphorism. It is a funny thing about architecture:--nearly as it concerns our every day needs, much as it is criticised about our ears, our knowledge of it, nevertheless, continues to be absurdly inexact and experimental. I am speaking now of architecture as a fine art, not as the science of an engineer. One has only to read the reviews to note how little the authors themselves know to tell us, how they go ’round and ’round the animal, with more or less entanglement, as we have read of picadors doing in a bull fight. And when they have finished can we call PLATE LXVII.