50 
HO USE & GARDEN 
S TAIRS were made for a mystery 
and a sign. They are among 
the few old signs standing for 
mysteries that the modern house contains. For though the 
modern house contains its signs, few contain signs that stand 
for mysteries, since most of the signs are now merely matters 
of decoration. 
A mystery is a different thing entirely. It is something you 
cannot understand, and, in order to know that it exists and so 
that you will not forget it, you set up its sign. Moreover, it 
is a thing that, in modern terms, proves amply efficient to its 
generation. 
Once on a day men carved on the 
posts of their beds the images of 
the four evangelists who watched 
over them in the lonesome, bleak 
night hours. How they would 
watch was a mystery, how they 
could watch was a mystery; never¬ 
theless, there was the sign. Mat¬ 
thew, Mark, Luke and John, 
mounted on the four corners of a 
bed nowadays, have to fit in with 
the furniture. They are part of the 
decoration but not of the dogma. 
The four evangelists did not pre¬ 
vent black plague from creeping in 
as bedfellow, nor did they ward off 
the murderous dagger of the foe— 
whereas antiseptics and locks might 
have—but many nights did those 
four signs watch over the blissful 
slumber of simple men and women 
and little children and, in the 
dawn, know the thankful salutation 
that comes to those who do their 
work as best they can, who are 
amply efficient to their generation. 
To-day we pin our faith on the 
antiseptic and the lock. Both often 
fail. Their great disadvantage lies 
in the fact, however, that we can¬ 
not pin them to our bed’s head, for 
the one does not grace a post as 
would an image, and the other is 
not so fragrant as the incense with 
which in those old days men spiced 
their rooms against the baleful 
odors of disease. 
THE MYSTERY OF STAIRS 
S TAIRS are a mystery in the 
same measure. They take a 
man up and they take him 
down. Why he should go up and 
down may be a simple matter: he 
wants to get up or he wants to go 
down. The stairs take him. Fine! 
They also take him step by step. 
And therein lies the mystery. It 
requires a constant regular effort 
on his part—as constant and regular 
as belief in a mystery—to climb the 
stairs. There is, moreover, always 
the step ahead that he would at¬ 
tain. 
No man ever stops on stairs save 
he be tired or weak or given to 
posing or to holding conversation 
with friends in the middle of high¬ 
ways. For stairs were not made 
to stand still on; as in life, one must 
keep going up or down. Life 
knows no such thing as stagnation. 
To be sure, there is rest between 
rises, just as there is rest between heart-beats, but the road 
goes all the way until the end. The wise man is the one who 
knows when to rest. 
Moreover, no one ever slid upstairs, although children and 
drunken men often slide down. And only children and drunken 
men blissfully defy the mystery of stairs by sliding down, 
because they cannot have the robust faith to grasp the power 
THE PAPER GARDEN 
Bring pencils, fine pointed, 
For our writing must be infinitesimal; 
And bring sheets of paper 
To spread before us. 
Now draw the plan of our garden-beds, 
And outline the borders and the paths 
Correctly. 
We will scatter little words 
Upon the paper, 
Like seeds about to be planted; 
We will fill all the whiteness 
With little words 
So that the brown earth 
Shall never show between our flowers; 
Instead, there will be petals and greenness 
From April till November. 
These narrow lines 
Are rose-drifted thrift, 
Edging the paths. 
And here I plant nodding columbines, 
With tree-tall wistarias behind them, 
Each stem umbrellaed with its purple fringe. 
Winged sweet peas shall flutter next to pansies 
All down the sunny center. 
Foxglove spears, 
Thrust back against the swaying lilac leaves, 
Will bloom and fade before the china asters 
Smear their crude colors over autumn hazes. 
These double paths dividing make an angle 
For bushes, 
Bleeding hearts, I think, 
Their flowers jigging 
Like little ladies. 
Satined, hoop-skirted, 
Ready for a ball. 
The round black circles 
Mean striped and flaunting tulips, 
The clustered trumpets of yellow jonquils, 
And the sharp blue of hyacinths and squills. 
These specks like dotted grain 
Are coreopsis, bright as bandannas, 
And ice-blue heliotrope with its sticky leaves, 
And Mignonette, 
Whose sober-colored cones of bloom 
Scent quiet mornings. 
And poppies! Poppies! Poppies! 
The hatchings shall all mean a tide of poppies, 
Crinkled and frail and flowing in the breeze. 
Wait just a moment, 
Here’s an empty space. 
Now plant me lilics-of-the-valley — 
This pear-tree over them will keep them cool — 
We’ll have a lot of them 
With white bells jingling. 
The steps 
Shall be all soft with stonecrop; 
And at the top 
I'll make an arch of roses, 
Crimson, 
Bee-enticing. 
There, it is done; 
Seal up the paper. 
Let us go to bed and dream of flowers. 
Amy Lowell 
of signs. Most of us mount the steps 
one by one, just as we rise in life; and 
go down the steps one by one, as some 
do in life. And on the whole we are satisfied because we still 
believe in stairs albeit we do not understand them. 
The author of a recent book on the history of the house be¬ 
moans the existence of stairs in this day of enlightenment, and 
he cites, as examples of the horror and ineffectuality of them, 
certain famous men and women who have fallen down them to 
their deaths. It is true, stairs are dangerous to those who will 
not take them step by step, just as any mystery is a two-edged 
sword hurled at the man who, pro¬ 
fessing belief in it, does not live it. 
But stairs are the most feasible 
method of ascent and decent be¬ 
cause they are the least danger¬ 
ous. What are the few who fall 
stricken down stairs to the hosts 
who fall unstricken down elevator 
shafts! 
And the fact that stairs are 
only one stage above the rudimen¬ 
tary ladder is no more of an argu¬ 
ment against them than saying 
that clothes are only one step above 
the rudimentary nakedness. 
Heaven knows, we have too few 
of these rudimentary things in 
life—too few of the ways that 
cause men the healthy effort which 
breeds healthy minds in healthy 
bodies. 
L 
IKE any mystery, stairs are 
possessed of a fine democracy. 
The king and the cat that 
looks at the king can alike ascend 
them, and be they spiral or straight, 
the ascent for each traveler is the 
same. Through that very democ¬ 
racy do the kingly qualities of the 
king and the feline qualities of the 
cat make themselves pronounced— 
for, be it remembered, democracy 
means not that all men are the 
same, but that all have the same 
chance to express their individu¬ 
ality. You can tell what a man is 
by the way he comes down stairs. 
The elevator, on the other hand 
gives no such opportunity because 
all the occupants must act the same: 
face the door. You enter the 
same, ride the same, and go out the 
same. 
The mechanics of elevators may 
be perfect, but their philosophy is 
all wrong. They are the product of 
that environment which has created 
tall buildings; they meet the de¬ 
mands of a narrow space. In them¬ 
selves they have no beauty because 
they are Frankensteins of mechan¬ 
ism. In them men are their slaves. 
They hold men’s lives in the hollow 
of their latticed iron hand. Of 
stairs men are masters. The effort 
is yours. You go up them and come 
down them kingly or sneaking like 
a cat. 
I T is difficult to believe the mys¬ 
tery of stairs, however much 
you are convinced that they are 
, a mystery. It was equally difficult 
to believe the efficiency of the four evangelists on the bed 
posts. And when you stop to think of them, it requires a 
sturdy belief to accept the mysteries of lock and antiseptics 
and doorbells. Look around your house. You are dwelling 
in a cloud of mysteries. Their signs you touch every day. 
I erhaps Tertullian was right with his “Credo quia impos¬ 
sible!” 
