Then the name of the house should be painted on in white, _not_ gilded letters, and if we put as well ‘Please shut this gate quietly’ on both sides of the top bar, we shall find that we at least are no longer noise-makers in general, and, as far as our special gate is concerned, the great slamming question is replied to satisfactorily. I may seem to dwell unduly on the matter of noise, but I can assure my readers that every preventable noise is both a sin against themselves and also against their neighbours. They may be in rude health and inclined to jeer at all I say, but the day will come when their heads will ache and their nerves bother them and when noise will torture them, and then they will wish devoutly that they had legislated at first for peace, for they certainly won’t get it when they have not the strength to insist on it. I say preventable noise, and most noises are that, for even the wretched piano in the schoolroom can be placed in such a position that it only worries those to whom it belongs; while the person who encourages barrel-organs or screaming children, should be at once sent to the wilds of America, no other place being large enough to hold such a barbarian. We know, of course, all English folk think their homes are their castles; well, if so, the castle should have appropriate surroundings. There is nothing much of the castle about a suburban residence, and the sooner this fact is realised the better for those who dwell therein and on both sides. Now, the carriage gate being painted and settled with, and arranged to be fastened back should we have many callers from three to six in summer, from three to five in winter, we can turn our attention to the front door. I have had to circumvent for myself and for many many other folk the ordinary suburban residence, and I have only in one case found the front door treated in a manner that showed me that the man who planned the house had the very smallest idea of what he was about. As a rule, the front door opens straight on the narrow passage called hall by courtesy, with the ladder-like flight of stairs going straight up at one side. Then just opposite the front door, and about eighteen or twenty feet from it, is the door of the third room, which becomes library, smoking-room, or even day-nursery or schoolroom, according to the tastes and the age and number of the owner’s family, and nothing can be worse than this arrangement. But in the exception of which I speak, the hall ends at the front door portion in a wall, and the front door is placed opposite, as in the diagram on the next page, and thus the wind which enters when the front [Illustration]