you protest--if, for instance, you say you consider seven mouldings underneath the cornice on the ceiling to be too much--he will say it is necessary in order to break the line. This isn’t true. Because the architects of ancient times did not find it necessary to “break the line” in this manner, nor do the architects of modern America. But that they do not is a very remarkable fact indeed. It is probably unique in the modern world, and the result of it is magnificent architecture. American architecture is good because it is based on common sense. The worst kind of architecture is that which is based on nonsense. By nonsense I mean non-sense, the contrary of sense. The kind of architecture which puts in a room a staircase which goes nowhere is non-sense. All the finest architecture in the world was made for a definite purpose and use, and made to suit that purpose and use. The pyramids of Egypt had a use; the only thing is, nobody knows now what it was, but it was something very definite; of that we can be certain from the enormous care which was taken to build them in accordance with certain mathematical calculations and according to a certain disposition and conjunction of the stars, the latitude, and the longitude. The idea that they were simply tombs is, I believe, difficult to support. But whatever the purpose was, we can be certain they had a purpose. They were not simply staircases leading nowhere. Now the Pennsylvania Railway Station _is_ a railway station, and the architecture is subordinate to its use. The result is magnificent. Nothing would have been added to its use had it been filled with absurd lines and curves, twisted flowers, impossible fruits and silly claws; and nothing would have been added to its beauty.