A flight of steps tells the story of a house. It gives you a man's love of splendor and magnificence, proves his aspirations toward the beautiful, and reveals his secret care and private hope. It is like an open book, lying outspead before you, in which you may read of royal pageants, trysts of lovers, or the charms of sunny, terraced gardens. It convinces you of past glories, as no fireplace or portal could do. You realise this in feudal castles, where wide flights are found leading to underground galleries once assigned to armed retainers. No single file of soldiers mounted these, but phalanx after phalanx of stern warriors in clattering steel. What else, indeed, could give you as clearly the very sign and seal of a power long since fled, and half-forgotten?

REFERENCE:

French, Lillie Hamilton. The House Dignified. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1908, p. 7.