one he has never climbed before. Nobody hired him to climb any
mountain; he isn't climbing it on a bet or because somebody dared
him to climb one. He is not dressed for mountain climbing.
Apparently he is wearing the costume in which he escaped from the
institution where he had been an inmate--a costume consisting
simply of low stockings, sandals and a kind of flowing woolen
nightshirt, cut short to begin with and badly shrunken in the wash.
He has on no rubber boots, no sweater, not even a pair of ear
muffs. He also is bare-headed. Well, any time the wearing of
hats went out of fashion he could have had no use for his head,
anyhow.

I grant you that in the poem Mr. Longfellow does not go into
details regarding the patient's garb. I am going by the
illustration in the reader. The original Mr. McGuffey was very
strong for illustrations. He stuck them in everywhere in his
readers, whether they matched the themes or not. Being as fond
of pictures as he undoubtedly was, it seems almost a pity he did
not marry the tattooed lady in a circus and then when he got
tired of studying her pictorially on one side he could ask her
to turn around and let him see what she had to say on the other
side. Perhaps he did. I never gleaned much regarding the family
history of the McGuffeys.

Be that as it may, the wardrobe is entirely unsuited for the rigors
of the climate in Switzerland in winter time. Symptomatically it
marks the wearer as a person who is mentally lacking. He needs a
keeper almost as badly as he needs some heavy underwear. But this
isn't the worst of it. Take the banner. It bears the single word
"Excelsior." The youth is going through a strange town late in