with a regularly bad day, but these
ha'porth-of-all-sorts kind of days do not suit me. It aggravates me to
see a bright blue sky above me when I am walking along wet through,
and there is something so exasperating about the way the sun comes out
smiling after a drenching shower, and seems to say: "Lord love you, you
don't mean to say you're wet? Well, I am surprised. Why, it was only my
fun."

They don't give you time to open or shut your umbrella in an English
April, especially if it is an "automaton" one--the umbrella, I mean, not
the April.

I bought an "automaton" once in April, and I did have a time with it! I
wanted an umbrella, and I went into a shop in the Strand and told them
so, and they said:

"Yes, sir. What sort of an umbrella would you like?"

I said I should like one that would keep the rain off, and that would
not allow itself to be left behind in a railway carriage.

"Try an 'automaton,'" said the shopman.

"What's an 'automaton'?" said I.

"Oh, it's a beautiful arrangement," replied the man, with a touch of
enthusiasm. "It opens and shuts itself."

I bought one and found that he was quite correct. It did open and shut
itself. I had no control over it whatever. When it began to rain, which
it did that season every alternate five minutes, I used to try and get
the machine to open, but it would not budge; and then I used to stand
and struggle with the wretched thing, and shake it, and swear at it,
while the rain poured down in torrents. Then the moment the rain ceased
the absurd thing would go up suddenly with a jerk and would not come
down again; and I had to walk about under a bright blue sky, with an
umbrella over my head, wishing that it would come on to rain again, so
that it might not seem that I was insane.

When it did shut it did so unexpectedly and knocked one's hat off.

I don't know why it should be so, but it is an undeniable fact that
there is nothing makes a man look so supremely ridiculous as losing
his hat. The feeling of helpless misery that shoots down one's back on
suddenly becoming aware that one's head is bare is among the most bitter
ills that flesh is heir to. And then there is the wild chase after it,
accompanied by an excitable small dog, who thinks it is a game, and
in the course of which you are certain to upset three or four innocent
children--to say nothing of their mothers--butt a fat old gentleman on
to the top of a perambulator, and carom off a ladies' seminar