Some years ago I built a house in which I settled, with my spouse. It
was a gorgeous shack, indeed; the kind of house of which you read. For
such a house I’d always yearned, and so I said, “Expense be derned! I
want the best that coin will buy; my dwelling place must stack up high.
I want a dwelling that will stand till I’m so old I should be canned.”
I said, “I want a splendid stair, a stairway that’s beyond compare; the
kind you read about in books, with banisters and window nooks.”
And so we built a noble stair, and it was surely passing fair; and
guests who came to spend the night, when viewing it, expressed delight,
and said it surely took the cake; it was a bird, and no mistake.
But when the stair was five years old its antics made my trilbys cold.
It warped and twisted like the deuce, till half the steps and rails
were loose, it creaked and crackled, as in pain, and warped and bent
and warped again. It took a circus acrobat to climb my stairway after
that.
Then came a neighbor to my door, who’d built a hundred shacks or more.
He viewed my stair and shed some weeps, and said, “That is a frost,
for keeps. You’d better take it out from there and get yourself a
Curtis stair. The wood the Curtis people use will ne’er its right
proportions lose; it will not wind around, I wist, like some dadblamed
contortionist. For it is seasoned to a hair; there is no reckless
guesswork there.
“The Curtis trademark on a stair just means that grief won’t travel
there. You have a stairway that will last until your earthly woes are
past, and you are playing golden lyres, or heaping brimstone on the
fires.
“Your warped old stairway yet will wreck some fellow’s back or break
his neck, so pull it down, I humbly beg, before there is a broken leg.
Then get the Curtis seasoned wood, and have a stairway staunch and
good, and you will bless me every day for showing you the proper way.”
And now a noble Curtis stair adds grace and comfort to my lair; I never
find it on the blink, it doesn’t warp or split or shrink.