Flannel

Of course there was a bottle of oil for the lantern, and Mrs. Schuyler added a box of pills and a bottle of Hamlin's mixture as medical stores.

the boys wore blue flannel trousers and shirts and each one carried an extra pair of trousers and an extra shirt instead of a coat these with a few pairs of stockings and two or three handkerchiefs were all the clothing that they needed so uncle john said though the boys had imagined that they must take at least two complete suits He showed them that two flannel shirts, worn at the same time one over the other, would be as warm as one shirt and a coat, and that if their clothing became wet, it could easily be dried.

Flannel and the compass are the two things that are indispensable to navigation, said Uncle John.

If flannel shirts had not been invented, Columbus would never have crossed the Atlantic.

Perhaps there was a little exaggeration in this, but when we remember that flannel is the only material that is warm in cold weather and cool in hot weather, and that dries almost as soon as it is wrung out and hung in the wind, it is difficult to see how sailors could do without it.