ue that we are to have no carpets in the
apartments where these hardwood floors have been laid, but these
handsome floors simply emphasize and italicize a man's poverty unless
they are dotted with rugs, and there is none so foolhardy as to deny
that the average rug costs five times as much as the average carpet.
And the care demanded by a hardwood floor is exacting, for that shining
surface, upon which every spot of dust stands out so distinctly, must
be gone over daily with a soft brush, and must be wiped up with a wet
cloth at least thrice a week.

Moreover the utmost precaution must be practised lest the surface of
the hardwood floor be scratched or be seamed by the nails in one's
boots or by the legs of tables or of chairs. Our youngest son,
Erasmus, complains grievously of the restrictions put upon him since he
entered upon this hardwood-floor epoch of his career. It is hard for
the buoyant lad to understand why he is not to be permitted to slide
and skate on these floors as he has hitherto been permitted to slide
and skate on the floors of the rented houses we have lived in. I have
not chided Erasmus for his remonstrances, for I, too, have been tempted
to rebel against the new order of things. If either Erasmus or I ever
build a house of our own we shall eschew the hardwood-floor heresy as
we would a pest.

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.

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