Domestically, however, the hall became and remains the most semantically demoted room in the home. At the Old Rectory, as in most homes these days, it is a shrunken vestibule, a small utilitarian square with cupboards and hooks, where we take off boots and hang jackets—a clear preliminary to the house itself. Most of us unconsciously acknowledge this fact by inviting arriving guests into our houses twice: once at the door when they are brought in from outside, and then again, after they have been divested of coats and hats, into the house proper with a hearty, more emphatic double cry of “Come
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