Page:Six months in Kansas.djvu/50

46 On the same lot, directly in the rear, is a barn-looking building, with four small rooms below, each having a door opening outside; a flight of stairs running up at the end, into four little attics. Each of these rooms has slatted walls, floors, and bedsteads, and is designed to receive (I will not say accommodate) three persons. I am thus particular in my description because I have had a great deal to do with these rooms, and I wish all your sympathy with everything I experience. The parlor is furnished with one table, small, oval-shaped, hewn out from the beautiful black walnut of the country; one rocking-chair, and three lounges, made of round sticks of unpealed wood, over which is stretched cotton cloth, of rather uncertain firmness of fabric, giving one the idea of breaking through. They are stuffed with prairie grass, and nicely covered with patch.

This house is kept by two clever women from Lowell; one of whom kept a boarding-house there, and the other, as an operative, commended herself to some literary celebrity as Editress of the "Lowell Offering." The last mentioned person lay upon one of these