that she should have been ashamed of herself; others, that Mr.
Longfellow, in giving her away, was guilty of an indelicacy, to
say the least of it. Possibly she was practicing up to qualify
for membership on the reception committee the next time the visiting
firemen came to her town or when there was going to be an Elks'
reunion; so I for one shall not question her motives. She was
hospitable--let it go at that. The peasant couples with his
good-night message a reference to the danger of falling pine wood
and also avalanches, which have never been pleasant things to meet
up with when one is traveling on a mountain in an opposite
direction.

All about him firelights are gleaming, happy families are gathered
before the hearthstone, and through the windows the evening yodel
may be heard percolating pleasantly. There is every inducement
for the youth to drop in and rest his poor, tired, foolish face
and hands and thaw out his knee joints and give the maiden a
chance to make good on that proposition of hers. But no, high up
above timber line he has an engagement with himself and Mr.
Longfellow to be frozen as stiff as a dried herring; and so, now
groaning, now with his eye flashing, now with a tear--undoubtedly
a frozen tear--standing in the eye, now clarioning, now sighing,
onward and upward he goes:

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!