What treatment do we now give to doors? We build brick jambs with wooden or iron lintels, as if we would trial the doors with wood. We then put up cast-iron jambs, rivet to their edges pilasters or architraves of the same material, and then surmount the whole perhaps, with a cast-iron cornice and pediment. Some have gone so far as to inlay the panels of the iron work with bits of colored marble, thus heightening the effect of the already rough finish of the iron, a roughness which the best foundrymen have been unable to prevent, and which, it would cost untold money to reduce down to the smoothness of ordinary work in pine wood. In one of our most pretentious houses on Fifth Avenue, they are now putting up jambs, architraves and cornices made of sawn slabs of marble or marble boards, in the same manner in which wood and iron have been used. And what does all this amount to? In the category of shams, there is no equal to this monstrous succession. You have imitated a Greek or Roman architrave and cornice by a wooden sham, your wooden sham has been imitated by an iron sham, your iron sham has been imitated by a marble sham; and what is the result? You have kept the form all along; you have come back to the original material by a succession of imitations, and have at last a shell without meat, marble carpentry instead of marble architecture. In all the stages of your attempt to revive the old forms, you have sham imitation of shams down to the final achievement of your carpenter in marble. Next must follow, I suppose, the imitation marble-vender, who will crown the whole fabric of shams and give you something which can as much be called architecture as Mr. Shoddy’s painted “red backs” and “blue backs” resemble standard literature. I offer no original suggestion to remedy this condition of affairs. Go back to your old Greek, go back to your old Roman models, if you like them, and seeing how they are built, go and do likewise; but spare us these sham contrivances. Set up your door posts and plant your lintel upon them, whether for exterior or interior use, and carve them to suit your fancy. They will be at least _good_ so long as they be genuine and strong. Then figure up the cost of this kind of work, and see how much you have saved for your clients.