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Door.

1. An opening in a wall for a passageway.

2. A frame or barrier closing said opening.

The word forms a part of many compound words, such as —

Donkey-pumps.

Door-alarm.

Door-bell.

Door-case.

Door-fastener.

Door-knob.

Door-lock.

Door-nail.

Door-plate.

Door-spring.

Door-stone.

Door-stop.

Door-strip.

Door-way plane, etc.

The doors of ancient Egypt and contemporary nations swung upon vertical pintles which projected from the top and bottom of the door into sockets in the lintel and threshold respectively. The commonest form of door had the pintle in the middle of the width, so that, as it opened, a way was afforded on each side of it for ingress or egress. This is much better than the villianous system of making the doors of churches, theaters, and assembly-rooms open inward, forming traps to catch the people when a stampede occurs from a fire or an alarm. It is but recent in our recollection, the account of the burning of a cathedral at Callao or some other city on the South American coast, when the building, decked out with paper and calico, in all the frippery of a saint's gala-day, was burned, with 800 miserable people, — women and children chiefly, for such are the principal patrons of churches in that land of Mestizoes.

It is not to be inferred that a simple valve swinging on a central axis was the only form of door, for in other structures we find the sockets near the posts, showing that the door turned upon an axis in the line of one of its vertical edges. Such doors, among the Romans, were fastened by bars or chains. Doorlocks were known in Thebes centuries previous to the Augustan era of Rome, and some are to be found in the museums of Europe. See lock.

The street doors of Greek and Roman houses opened outward when formed of a single leaf, and an issuing citizen rang a bell to warn passengers in the street; or sometimes of a pair of leaves, each swinging on its own pintle and forming a double door. When doors were made to fold, they were swung inward; in this case one valve was hinged to another and swung back against its principal, the latter having pivots which turned in the threshold and lintel. Such doors were known in ancient Greece.

The doors of the residence of the Inca Huayna [720] Capac, in the vicinity of Cotopaxi, were similar to those of the Egyptian temples.

The doors of the oracle of Solomon's Temple were of olive-tree, and were “a fifth part of the wall.” As the width of the house was 20 cubits, the doorway was about 6 1/2 feet wide. The door was double. The outer door of the temple was of fir, and hung upon olive-tree posts. The doorway was about eight feet wide, and the double doors had each two leaves.

“The two leaves of the one door were folding, and the two leaves of the other door were folding.”

It is not easy to find in any other very ancient author so clear a description of the proportions and construction of a building as is found in 1 Kings, VI.

A pair of doors have figured somewhat largely in the history of East Indian conquest. It is seldom that so much fuss has been made about a pair of doors since Samson took those of Gaza from their hinges, about 1120 B. C., and carried them to the top of a hill before Hebron. He took them “bar and all,” not condescending to unlock them, but tearing them from their foundations.

The doors of the Temple of Siva, at Somnauth, a town of Guzerat, in Hindostan, were of sandal-wood, elaborately carved in correspondence with the other portions of the temple, which was an oblong hall 96 × 68 feet, crowned by a dome. When Mahmoud, of Ghizni, at the head of his Mohammedan hordes, invaded India (A. D. 1004), on a mixed mission of plunder and conversion, he mingled avarice with enthusiasm and lust, so as to afford a first-rate model for a demon to master Anacreon Moore, some 800 years afterward: —

'T is he of Ghizni, fierce in wrath
He comes, and India's diadems
Lie scattered in his ruinous path;
His bloodhounds he adorns with gems
Torr from the violated necks
Of many a young and loved sultana;
Maidens within their pure zenana,
Priests in the very fane he slaughters,
And chokes up with the glittering wrecks
Of golden shrines the sacred waters

of the Ganges, of course. It must not be understood, however, that he failed to strip off the gold before he pitched these things into the muddy waters of the river, which delivers yearly into the Bay of Bengal 534,600,000 tons of solid matter.

Mahmoud, about 1024, after desolating Northern India for some years, came to Somnauth, and — omitting the details — plundered from the Temple of Siva “the destroyer” the rich offerings of centuries, carrying them and the doors of the temple to Afghanistan, where the latter were made the doors of his tomb.

Here they rested till 1842, when the English, stung to madness by the massacre of 26,000 soldiers and camp followers in the Kyber pass, in the month of January of the same year, invaded Afghanistan in force, and conquered Akbar Khan. Lord Ellenborough, inflated with an august desire for poetical, historical, and every other kind of retribution, seized upon the doors of Mahmoud's tomb as representatives of the success of Mohammedan domination, and carried them back to India proper, chanting a paean whose refrain was “the insult of eight hundred years is avenged,” and commanding that the doors should be “transmitted with all honor” to the Temple of Siva. The British government, goaded on the one hand by Exeter Hall, and on the other by its fear of the two unmingled races who occupy Hindostan, found itself with an elephant on its hands, and stopped the gates at Agra, where they remain.

Doors.

A, batten-door.

B, panel-door.

a, top-rail.

b, middle or lock rail.

c, bottom-rail.

d, hanging style.

e, lock style.

f, munnion or muntin.

g, panels.

In a six-panel door the rail next to the top rail is called the frieze-rail.

A panel wider than its hight is a lying-panel. If of equal hight and width, a square panel. If its hight be greater than its width, a standing panel.

Double-door; two pairs of folding-doors, hung on the angles of the apertures and opening toward the reveals against which they are hung.

Folding-doors; a pair whose respective leaves are hung on opposite corners of the aperture in the same plane, so that the styles meet in the center when closed.

Double-margin doors are made in imitation of folding-doors, the middle style being made double with an intervening bead.

Sliding-doors are an improvement on folding; they slip into grooves in the partition.

A proper-ledged door is one made of boards placed side by side with battens called ledges at the back. With a diagonal piece at the back, in addition, it is said to be framed and ledged.

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