DOORS.

AN ingenious writer or talker, I am not
certain which, once proposed to trace the
progress of human civilisation by the number
of prongs in the fork with which we eat our
food. The imperfectly civilised man, he
showed, ate with a skewer or a fish-bone;
our middle-age ancestors were content with a
dagger or a hunting-knife to sever their
victual and convey it to their mouths; then
came the fork with two prongs, which is yet
used by the peasant in some remote parts of
England. Advancing civilisation brought
with it the three-pronged fork- of fiddle,
king, or prince's pattern; and now that we
are in the apogee of our refinement, the
gourmand demands, obtains, and uses the
fork of four prongs. Each succeeding age
may add another prong to the fork, until the
number amount to ten; then perhaps extremes
will meet, and we shall revert to the
simple austerity of savages, and eat with our
ten fingers.

I scarcely know why I should have noticed
this ingenious theory, for I am not at all
inclined to agree with it, and do not, myself,
see any special analogy between civilisation
and forks. For the most civilised nations
and renowned epicures of antiquity used not
any forks- save to make furcifers, as a mark
of ignominy for criminals; and the most
ancient people and most elaborate professors
of social etiquette in the world- the Chinese
- have no forks to this day, and have no
better conductors to their mouths for their
stewed dog and edible bird's-nests than chopsticks.
I take Sir John Bowring to witness.
However, just as that valiant Field Marshal
Thomas, alias Thumb, was accused of making
his giants before he slew them, and as an
advertising tradesman mentions his rival's
wares in order to decry them and puff his
own, it may be that I have touched upon the
theory of civilisation and forks to enable me
with a better grace to introduce my own
theory of civilisation and doors.

The savage has no door to his dwelling.
Even when he has ceased burrowing in the
ground like a rabbit or a wild dog, and has
advanced to the dignity of a hut, or kraal, a
hunting-lodge, a canoe turned keel upwards,
or any one of those edifices in resemblance
between a wasp's-nest and a dirt-pie, in
which it is the delight of the chief and warrior
to dwell, to dance, to howl, to paint himself
and to eat his foes, he never rises to the
possession of a door. The early Greeks and
Romans had doorways, but no doors. Noah's
ark- the ridiculous toy-shop figment notwithstanding,
could not have had a door. Mordecai
sat in the gate, but Haman's door is
nowhere mentioned. The old painters who
represent Dives take care to show you an
opening into the street, but no door; and
through the entrance you see Lazarus lying,
and the dogs licking his sores. The mouths
of caves and sepulchres in oriental countries
where the dead were buried were closed with
huge stones; it was reserved for our age of
funeral furnishers and cemetery companies to
build a mausoleum over our dear brother
departed with a door with panels, and knobs,
and nails, and carvings, wanting only a brass
knocker to have everything in common with
the door of a desirable family mansion. The
Parthenon had no door: go and look at its
modelled counterfeit in the British Museum;
through the lofty portal you see the wilderness
of columns and the gigantic statue of
the goddess. The great temples of Nineveh
and Babylon, of Ephesus and Egypt, had no
doors. Skins and linen veils, tapestries and
curtains of silk, were hung across doorways
then- as, in the East, they are now- to
ensure privacy to those within; Gaza had
gates, and so had Somnauth; but the door,
the door-knocker, the brass-plate, the bells
that flank it for visitors and servants, the iron
chain, the latch-key, the top and bottom bolts
- these are all the inventions of modern
times, and the offshoots of modern civilisation.
Wherever there is most luxury, you
will find most doors. Poverty, dirt, barbarism,
have little or no doors yet. Again,
where manners are rude and unpolished, a
post, a pit, a cellar, a cage, suffice for the confinement
of a criminal; but where men
congregate thickly- where art, learning, and
commerce flourish, where riches multiply,
and splendour prevails- men must have
prisons with many doors: ten, twenty, thirty,
one inside the other, like carvings in a
Chinese concentric ball.

Doors have as many aspects as men. Every
trade and calling, every sect and creed, every