Reminiscent and Personal 33 



do not breathe : they gasp ; and millions 

 of them keep their windows closed at that 

 The Colorado miner inflates his lungs 

 about twice as far as he did when he was 

 a New York clerk. Such breathing ought 

 to make a superior race. Ergo, mankind 

 is well off on the mountains. 



I guess " Robinson Crusoe" had some- 

 thing to do with it, for at the age of nine or 

 ten I had decided to be a hermit and live 

 either in a cave on the side of a mountain, 

 or on the summit in a two-story house con- 

 taining a natural history museum and a 

 gymnasium. In Vermont, where my sum- 

 mers were spent, I was overwhelmed with 

 opportunities. Being much of the time on 

 hill-tops, when I was neither picking ber- 

 ries nor swimming, but in all cases delay- 

 ing dinner and storing up trouble, it was 

 an aggravation that I could not decide 

 which of the various views was the finest. 

 Probably I did not propose to live on 

 scenery, yet there was no thought of a 

 farm, or garden, or firewood, or a water- 

 supply, or a piano. The climbing became 

 habitual ; it extended over the Catskills, 

 3 



