California Farmer and Journal of Useful Sciences, Volume 49, Number 18, 23 October 1879 — SOMETHING ABOUT STAIES. [ARTICLE]

SOMETHING ABOUT STAIES.

MRS. LAURA LYMAN* SIIII'HEI'I>.

As pins have saved a great many people's lives by not swallowing them, so stairs have saved a great many women's tempers and health by not having them to climb. Three days in a week at least the mother of a family who does her own work must be on her feet from morning till night —washing day, ironing day, baking day—and in this count, sweeping day and the day for general housework is not enumerated. If her working rooms are all on one floor her tasks arc hard enough, but suppose her kitchen is in a basement, and her dining-room and sitting-room on the second floor, and wood-house a step or two down, and her water likewise, the addition to the labor required is simply enormous. A house might as well be built on a steep side-hill, so far as doing the work is concerned, as to be built with steps from one room to the other. The woman who doeß her own work ought to have, on absolutely one level, the kitchen, the pantry, the diningroom, the nursery, and be able to get wood and water without taking one step up or down.

Some years ago we took a journey, anil during our absence secured a woman with three or four children to occupy our house and take care of it and the children we left behind. She was a woman who never opened her mouth but to complain of something or other, and on our return we began to dread meeting her and listening to her various fault-findings with what Bhe had had to put up with while we were away. Our house was situated on the top of a bill, so that there was no trouble about drainage, and all the rooms were on one floor and so little raised above the ground that the baby could roll from any one of its floor doors without hurting it, and creep from the grass to the carpet and the carpet to the grass without assistance. It was easy to see at the first salutation when we entered the house that everything had gone smoothly, and we might have staid away a month longer just as well as not, so far as the family left behind was concerned. "This fs such au easy house to work in," said the woman. "I can gt ai'.mnd all day, every day of the Week, and not begin to feel so tired as I do after one day of work in the house I'm going back to, " And ever afterward when any allusion was made to the time she spent in the house, it was always met with her exclamation, "That is such an easy house to do work iv I"

Perhaps if that woman, who hy the way, was of heavy weight, had had an "easy house to do work in" she might have been all the time sweettempered and contented with life and its conditions. On the long march soldiers throw away one thing and then another that at the outset they considered necessaries, and at the end of the march are encumbered with absolutely nothing that can be dispensed with. In like manner women tind at the end of the long march, beginning often with marriage ami running on through the years, that one step up or down becomes a burden almost intolerable. As the spring opens new houses will he built on our western prairies, and iv our villages and cities. Wherever a step or a flight of stairs can be avoided let it be done, and the unnecessary waste of muscle be thus saved.— The Jft>)t*ckeeper.