There has got to be a law passed to punish the hardware dealers for
selling those step ladders that shut up like a jack-knife. A Ninth Street
woman got onto one the other afternoon when it looked as though there was
going to be a frost, to take her ivies down and carry them in the house.
We don't care how handsome a woman is naturally, you put a towel around
her head and put her up on a step ladder about seven feet high, with a
tomahawk in her left hand, trying to draw a big nail out of a post on a
veranda, and she looks like thunder. This woman did. Her husband tried to
get her to let him do the work, but she said a man never knew how to do
anything, anyway. So he sat down on the steps to see how it would turn
out. She said afterwards that he kicked the ladder, but however that may
be, there was an earthquake, and when he looked up the air was filled with
calico, toweling, striped stockings, polonaise, trailing arbutus, red
petticoats, store hair and step ladder. He said the step ladder struck the
veranda last, but as he picked her off of it, it seemed as though it must
have lit first. He said the step ladder must have kicked up. In coming
down she run one leg through the baby wagon, and the other through some
flower pots, and a boy who was passing along said he guess she had been to
the turning school.