There is another evil which I am at this moment reminded of, and that is the folding-door evil. In all my experience I have never met with another door as honest, sensible, and trustworthy as the door that swings on hinges. I told Alice so when the subject of doors came up in our discussions of proposed innovations in the new house. But Alice had conceived the notion that we ought to have a folding door in the parlor, and when Alice once gets a notion into her head all creation with a pickaxe couldn't get it out again. Properly speaking, the door was not a folding door; it was a sliding door. When pushed back it was to disappear in the wall separating the parlor from the front hall. When I saw Uncle Si and his men constructing this door I expressed the fear that it wouldn't work, but Uncle Si laughed my fears to scorn; the trouble with too many doors, he said, was that they were made of cheap stuff; _this_ door, he assured me, was an A No. 1 door and would never--could never--get out of place. Then he showed me the rollers and attachments and proved their practicability and strength. Not knowing any more about such things than a seacow knows of the summer solstice, I assented to all his propositions and went my way with my apprehensions completely allayed. But in less than forty-eight hours after Uncle Si and his men turned over the house to us, bang went that door, and no power at our command could budge it an inch either way. Another carpenter came and investigated. Presently he shook his head and smiled a bitter smile. Then he told us that the break would not have happened if the fixtures had not been of the cheapest make. What we required, he said, was fixtures that cost ten dollars instead of three dollars, our door being a large parlor door and not a light pantry door. We bade this sarcastic genius go ahead and remedy the evil as best he could, and the result is that the door now slides as smoothly as even the most exacting could wish: this repair has involved the expenditure of only fifteen dollars, and I would not mention it if I had any confidence whatever in the door even in its rehabilitated condition. I know as well as I know anything else that as soon as we build a fire in our heating apparatus next November the heat thereof will warp and twist that door into such shape that it will be as impossible to budge it as if it were nailed down. We shall then be in a serious pickle, for we shall be unable to enter our parlor. The windows all over the house are fast in their casings, having been painted so carefully by those rascally painters that it requires the power of a steam derrick to raise them. The other morning I tried to open one of the windows in the butler's pantry, for the atmosphere in that place was absolutely stifling. I tugged and pulled and pushed in vain.