From Door to Door

...Such labor-saving, energy-saving, doors...

...Let those of us who still flee at formances was the demonstration of the Ward method by a times from this world which is "too much with us," group of girls from the Annunciation parish school, New ding fast to even our poor wooden doors, and if it so York...

...restlessly swinging to As we pass by these doorways, set back from the elm- and fro all day to let in the delivery boy and let out lined streets, we see instinctively the face of a sober the children and the dog...

...Heinroth, who is one of the finest representatives of Mrs...

...No amount of persuasion could bring him inside...

...seat...

...How can friend know friend, Clare, Holy Name, Saint Mary's, and Saint Paul's schools...

...The three arches of the Chartres been able to use-the so-called revolving doors-those Cathedral doorway are as inexhaustible in poetry and rudest and most ostentatiously modern of all doors, story as the King James version or the Roman prayer- so bewildering to all gentle folk, to children, and to book...

...With to our very bedside, or even enter our closed windows remarkable ensemble, with a freshness of tone that indelibly on the waves of the air as mysteriously as Peter Pan...

...For the first time weeks' normal course given the 300 teachers, the persistent he was alone with those who hunted with him and the supervision of the work in the schools, the calling of the Intertribe was born...

...The Junior School of Saint and that is well...

...Biblical tales, and so often touched with the comic These doorways were stately and dignified, not to spirit, are the expressions of a people to whom rebe opened lightly a dozen times a day for such com- ligion was a festival, a people to whom each day was modities as groceries or morning papers...

...Hurry up and find the goodman rose, grasped his staff and cloak, and that key," cried a new voice tense with eagerness...

...of each and said adieu...

...ing the last three years, it is the result of employing the main I think back to the early cavemen who from a huge idea in advertising and propaganda: people generally think and pile of rocks and debris fashioned the first door...

...Noble and reposeful in their beauty, these work in quest of friendship-hundreds and hundreds doorways bespoke a stock of which we all are duly of doors, mill-turned, neatly stained or painted, with proud...

...Its massive lintel and sill were for a while its fevered pain and leaves the mind clear a fitting frame for the poster-like picture of dykes like a limpid pool...

...There is no pausing on generation, God-fearing, Bible-loving, respecting the these door-sills, even our best friends "run in...

...he drives in without stopping his car...

...These children have been educated in music by Mother be that by any chance it fall to our lot to build a door, G. Stevens, and represent the Pius X School of Liturgical let us remember the doors that Ezekiel saw and carve Music...

...It was a pleasing tableau to see, the boys in surplice and soutane, the girls in blue with red collars and cuffs...

...Beside him, grief-stricken, sat his wife, his life- Hither, was led this new Diogenes seeking for a long companion and helpmeet...

...impresses the memory, they sang their choruses joyfully...

...It is good to tramp the hills and Joseph's Convent sent a choir of girls...

...I recall the story of the man who was hunting for I had only a moment to linger there but the feet of a house and baffled all the real estate men, for he was the mind are swifter than the feet of the body...

...do as they are told...

...Here was the Bible writ in stone, a petrified, could have invented and thus far only Americans have illuminated missal...

...The numbers included .sail the seas, to seek the silence of the woods or rest our Gregorian as well as modern music, part-singing as well as cramped eyes on visions of limitless space, but when unison, proper as well as ordinary of the Mass, Benediction motets, and English hymns from the Saint Gregory hymnal...

...Fatal By J. E. RONAN doors for poets and dreamers-Bolshevik doors bound to crush out the intelligentsia...

...the garage he of everybody's attention, and also possible of attainment...

...kitchen with its glistening coppers that one saw in "You noticed our door...

...It was as if a stone had been standing there, severe and yet of enduring beauty, the miraculously lifted from my spirit and left it free to colonial doorway of my grandfather's house...

...Their open- a saint's day, to whom such common acts as the breaking was an occasion, surrounded by ceremony, such as ing of the daily bread was a sacrament not to be done the welcoming of an honored guest whose journey in without a murmured prayer...

...came the eager answer...

...Such capable, the low standards prevailing in this field and who despair of self-sufficient doors-so like the smooth-faced, brisk- our children ever being attracted by anything but jazz or stepping young man who made them...

...For years it had stood there, cold and fallen over the household, as the goodman took his pipeless, an anomaly in our modern civilization...

...154 THE COMMONWEAL June 16, 1926 FROM DOOR TO DOOR By MAUDE DUTTON LYNCH T ODAY I went through a beautiful door...

...behind which our modern generawhich one was to pass, to render time that one's tion with their sharp-cut gimlet-like faces and their thoughts of this world might give way to thoughts of nervous hands and feet are living their restless lives...

...When I dream of England I see the exquisite full to admit of anything but hurry and pushing little Norman doorway of Iffley Church near Oxford, .through crowds, when suddenly I found myself face with its slender columns crowned by carved arches, to face with this beautiful door...

...However severe nals of those illiterate folk who peopled the middleand conventional the beautiful lines of the colonial ages...

...evening...

...Then began rattling the door-knob...

...Ghiberti gave years of his life to creating the the soil, and he pulled himself up into the clumsy bronze doors of the baptistry at Florence, weaving saddle...

...Here are about us saints and prophets, angels European visitors to our shores-those "step-lively" and archangels, choirs and heavenly hosts...

...well up again in a natural, bubbling stream...

...These half-open doors a lot more fitting than a stained-glass window or any were fitting symbols also of that mixture of Dutch kind of a monument-more like himself, something kindliness and native reticence-one could lean over June 16, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 155 this commodious half-door as one smoked one's pipe or from these doorways to all of God's children...

...Here are doors that have no sills, no archways, no porches, that creeds and chorals, litanies and Te Deums reaching out have no mercy on meditative folk, that seem to us of 156 THE COMMONWEAL June 16, 1926 timid nature to veritably suck us into their whirling CHURCH MUSIC IN TORONTO vortex and deposit us as rudely on another shore...

...A chorus of 750 children taken from the thirtyvoices when any intruder at any hour, day or night, five separate schools of Toronto filled the chorus platform on can glide down a steel wire right into our house, even the stage...

...The knit a sock, and gossip leisurely with all passers-by, great, mystical doorways built out of man's yearning, without actually sharing the intimacies of the hearth man's need, man's faith, man's desire to be with God...

...We call it the `Crusader's door.' " like a Scotch mist, and the errand I was on only All my life I have been a lover of doors and doorone of many petty tasks that had filled the hours too ways...

...Not that any colonial builder ever shook him- her basket on her head, the carter, whip beneath his self completely free l These doorways stand before arm, a little mother dragging a child by either hand, us restrained, cold, and formal in their beauty-true a brown-cloaked friar, a gowned student, a smocked off-spring of these reserved, undemonstrative, plain- peasant...

...those doors of undying splendor...

...guard our slumbers at night...

...It had needed and common, that anyone could use, and yet been a monotonous day with a mental atmosphere beautiful...

...Thrift and prosperity painted within...

...burnishing the grey-stone room...

...those who have heard harmonies from festival in the afternoon, and the adult choir festival in the far-off spaces have always lived behind closed doors...

...with all comers-perhaps another sign of Dutch thrift...

...Boys came from Saint -for us city dwellers...

...man know God, or know himself if he cannot go within Choirs of girls and boys represented Saint Helen's, Saint and close a door...

...or thread...

...It's a memorial door to our founder...

...It is as linen, and obtrusive vacuum cleaners are sucking the if these builders wished to emphasize the sill over dust from rugs...

...In the would turn saying, "No, I don't want this house," and chimney blazed an open fire, its orange, red, and gold go...

...His goodwife lifted his sack behind and he with hardened strands a fabled fabric as mystical moved off, never looking back, south, ever south to and delicate as if it had been woven of looping silk Jerusalem...

...The servants stood at home...

...Those old builders of Duxbury, Salem, see hands, multitudes of those praying hands that and Litchfield had a very different conception of what Durer drew, for these cathedral doorways are the jourthe front portal of a house should be...

...They unfold to let him in and those sad reformers who waste all their energies in deploring close back again when he has passed out...

...The introduction of the Ward method Rough stones closed in the first boundary that cut in our parish schools, the closing of the schools for the two the savage off from his enemies...

...other-worldliness...

...In silence they all ate it unhurryingly when a hand behind him suddenly reached forward and as cattle munch their evening meal in their stalls...

...They brought from the stable Artists, of course, have always been fascinated by his horse, like themselves a heavy, patient product of doors...

...For been any significant reform of Church music in Toronto durthat is the age into which we are passing now...

...More aeons and man shut taneous mushroom growth from the existing culture of a himself behind doors that he might be alone with him- people, but is rather the result of competent, talented, and self and out of this aloneness, behind that door, have authorized leaders exhorting and instructing the public to see leaped to birth all the great things of this earth...

...Are not these doorways T HE Toronto Gregorian music festival, held during the sounding the doom of all real doors...

...going about the table clasped in turn the horny hands "This is the house I want...

...Those their own welfare in the study of art...

...Theodore upon ours, too, cherubim and a palm tree...

...For the first time curving one above the other to form a veritable that day I paused, and with my hand upon its latch aureole, and when at times I long for my own New my thoughts, so drab a moment before, because iri- England, down through the vista of my memory I see descent and sparkling...

...In the afternoon an audience of 3,600, made up Where will poet, minstrel, and voyager find this soli- of children, teachers, religious and other adult listeners filled tude in a doorless world...

...Merely as a matter of with his great knife the sign of the cross, cut a por- form he began fumbling in his pocket for his keys tion for each...

...0 How can we steal apart from the world when wood Canada, God Save the King, and Holy God, We Praise Thy is being turned as transparent as glass by rays more Name became acts of patriotism and faith...

...through which to carry those other voyagers who And then I think of the modern door-the countless without shrift or pence were passing onto more dis- modern doors through which I have passed on my day's tant shores...

...who have followed stars, those who have seen the The festival comprised two performances, the children's beatific vision...

...That is a beautiful door," I and windmills done in solid colors that the old Dutchfaltered, as I finished my errand, the desire to share man looked out upon ; or the realistic Van der Meer my delight forcing the words through my hesitant lips...

...past spring, was a decided success in that it gave fresh I have a friend who prides himself on his up-to-date impetus to the reform of Church music-a movement to which Canada has given worthy aid...

...A long deal table Finally, half in jest, they took him to a pre-Revolugave length to the long room, simply set with the tionary house, so built that its Spartan builder had commonest utensils and bearing the day's meal- seemingly shaken his fist in the face of all modern coarse bread and wine...

...They bespeak a people who knew no distinction houses were, each front doorway was distinctive and between life and religion and for whom the Church decorative...

...They recognizedbut this picture did not come in words...

...Great, massive, beautithe lumbering stage-coach or on horseback was a life- ful, cathedral doorways, on which is written the diary time event, or again they were the proper setting of the middle-ages...

...Again we see faces coming out of the past-faces But doors such as these apparently made no appeal that Diirer painted, and Raphael, Michelangelo, faces to our Mayflower ancestors during their brief sojourn of sturdy stock and yet of meditative beauty, and we in Holland...

...These cathedral steps were worn by human thinking New Englanders-yet in these doorways the feet long before the tourists began to visit them, for builders let their imagination play for a moment with these doorways so rich in their carved garlands of fluted columned facades, hand-wrought iron palings, leaves and flowers, so human in their rendering of exquisite leaded sidelights, and spreading fans above...

...In their singing they were directed by Mr...

...Mechanical doors that, once opened, swing to of themBut it is perhaps the cathederal builders of the selves and even lock themselves with a self-satisfied, middle-ages who have fashioned for us the immortal smart little click...

...It was as if here, for a moment, the was the communal home...

...It seemed frame his geneological tree...

...He does not 'It was particularly a success in that it imposed silence on even see these doors...

...rights of all men...

...School after school wonderful than those from Aladdin's lamp...

...One knew that behind such doorways there well-oiled hinges and trim Yale locks...

...As he enters his own driveway in his that what is worthy of the Pope's Motu Proprio is worthy car, at just the proper distance from...

...entertainments of the Mutt and Jeff variety...

...How can we hear the inner Massey Hall...

...Reverently the walked up the overgrown flags to the front door with old man lifted the wheaten loaf, and making over it more than usual slowness...

...passes over an electric switch which opens his garage The festival was a public declaration of this conviction and doors as magically as doors open on the stage, and as such did much to form public opinion and public demand...

...There were many things also be- These doors are only surpassed in their ugliness and side the porch to bespeak lingering to an entering efficiency by that type of door that only an American guest...

...It seemed to the real estate man that his client their places mute, uncomprehending...

...Thoroughly were ordered households, staunch ideals of family life, practical doors, built to keep out the cold and safeand a seclusion that bred individuality and character...

...We must avoid And so it is, I have wanted to write this little word using the words "propaganda" and "advertising" in connection with Church music reform because of their present-day vulgar of gratitude for the many beautiful doors of the world associations with politics and commercialism...

...The festival gave expression home, who has just invented a new device for his to a conviction, growing among our teachers and choir masters, garage doors...

...In Holland the door with room beyond, but it left the day changed, as a cool its upper half flung wide-the so-called Dutch doorsensitive hand touching lightly an aching brow relieves was no mere accident...

...We are called an outdoor people Michael's, and Saint Vincent's...

...sent forward its chosen group of choristers to demonstrate The wilderness and the mountain top are too distant their achievements in sacred music...

...And in former days artisans were the It takes a vast bundle of words to form a picture, blood-brothers of the artists...

...Porches, thought-saving doors behind which electric washing these doorways generally were, as if to restrain the machines are noisily rocking the suds through soiled too hasty entrance into the House of God...

...We see no black coats and builder was permitted to loosen his skilled fingers from sombre Puritanical faces passing through these doors the grasp of Puritan traditions and let some of the at stated hours, but all day long up and down the blood of remoter ancestors flow back through their stone streets pass and repass the market woman with veins...

...Generations whirled by and it was national Convention of the Society of Saint Gregory to meet a door that separated those within the tribe and for the in Toronto in May, 1924, the frequent press notices-all first time man found himself alone with his mate and these means and others were used according to the policy that reform in art does not spring up everywhere at once as a sponthe family came into being...

...It flashed in builders, masons, hewers-of-stone though they wereand out of my mind in the brief moment that I stood that a doorway was more than a passage for the stream before that door...

...I flew always letting himself be led straight up to the front down the centuries and stood beside a thatched farm- door and just as the agent was about to unlock it house with door ajar into a spacious kitchen...

...looking in...

...But if there has before we pass on into a completely doorless age...

...When he died thrift and prosperity painted without, framed by that this doorway was built by the countless small contri- Dutch doorway stiffly and substantially, as one " would butions from those whom he had helped...

...Just look at that door...

...night comes or storms we want at least the flap of a An outstanding feature of both afternoon and evening pertent to close us in...

...It vanished as I passed into the of life to flow through...

...I could see that a hush had plumbers...