A careful tenant can keep the landlord’s grates and replace them when he leaves, but I never think this is worth the expense, the principal expense about changing the grates being the fixing them; at the same time, I cannot say too often that we shall not want to move in the insensate manner in which suburban residents do move nowadays, if we make ourselves comfortable at first, and do not sit down to discomfort, with that depressing sentence on our lips--‘After all, it’s only for three years, and therefore it is not worth while!’ Having begun our reform by putting in new and decent grates, we can turn our attention to the doors and windows and the floor. The draughts must be excluded by ‘Slater’s patent,’ and the floor properly stopped, and moreover planed if rough; while should the door show gaps, as I once knew one to do, in a manner which allowed the unfortunate owner to perceive, without opening it, whether the gas was burning in the hall outside or not, these gaps must be stopped, either by inserting slips of wood, or with putty, or some sort of stopping: the door, as usual, being covered inside and out by the ever-useful, ever-faithful and most decorative _portière_. I cannot understand the firm and pugnacious way in which the ordinary householder clings to his bare and undraped doors, and will not avail himself of the shelter and warmth which can be obtained in no other way. It cannot be the expense. Wallace supplies the rods at 4½d. a foot, the brackets cost about 4½d. each, and as a yard and a quarter of double-width material suffices for the ordinary suburban door, though I advise an extra half width; and this costs, at the outside, 5s.; I see no reason why this should not be put over even the humblest suburban door in the world. As it cannot be the cost, I can but come to the conclusion that as usual paterfamilias has interfered, a thing no man should do in a house on the matter of decoration and management. He may give an opinion if he is asked for one: though he is most judicious who takes care that that opinion coincides with that of his wife, so if he has been hardy enough to veto the _portière_, he must be gently, but firmly, shown that it is not stuffy--the thermometer will do that--and that neither is it a dust-trap. This can be demonstrated in a few minutes by taking it down before his eyes, and having it removed, shaken, and replaced all in less time than it takes to tell of it. If after this he objects to moving it on one side as he enters the door, he must be carefully trained to see how ridiculous such a notion is, the while it is casually mentioned that an entrance to a room is not to be effected in the same way one takes a five-barred gate. This is a lesson all men can be taught just as many of them have been taught, thanks to me, that the hall need not be strewed with hats, gloves and brushes, and hung with coats and waterproofs in the last stages of dissolution, and that they can be quite as happy with their