ividual
who carries them: indeed, they are far more capable of betraying his
trust; for whereas a face is given to us so far ready made, and all our
power over it is in frowning, and laughing, and grimacing, during the
first three or four decades of life, each umbrella is selected from a
whole shopful, as being most consonant to the purchaser's disposition.
An undoubted power of diagnosis rests with the practised
Umbrella-Philosopher. O you who lisp, and amble, and change the fashion
of your countenances--you who conceal all these, how little do you think
that you left a proof of your weakness in our umbrella-stand--that even
now, as you shake out the folds to meet the thickening snow, we read in
its ivory handle the outward and visible sign of your snobbery, or from
the exposed gingham of its cover detect, through coat and waistcoat, the
hidden hypocrisy of the "_dickey_"! But alas! even the umbrella is no
certain criterion. The falsity and the folly of the human race have
degraded that graceful symbol to the ends of dishonesty; and while some
umbrellas, from carelessness in selection, are not strikingly
characteristic (for it is only in what a man loves that he displays his
real nature), others, from certain prudential motives, are chosen
directly opposite to the person's disposition. A mendacious umbrella is
a sign of great moral degradation. Hypocrisy naturally shelters itself
below a silk; while the fast youth goes to visit his religious friends
armed with the decent and reputable gingham. May it not be said of the
bearers of these inappropriate umbrellas that they go about the streets
"with a lie in their right hand"?

The kings of Siam, as we read, besides having a graduated social scale
of umbrellas (which was a good thing), prevented the great bulk of their
subjects from having any at all, which was certainly a bad thing. We
should be sorry to believe that this Eastern legislator was a fool--the
idea of an aristocracy of umbrellas is too philosophic to have
originated in a nobody,--and we have accordingly taken exceeding pains
to find out the reason of this harsh restriction. We think we have
succeeded; but, while admiring the principle at which he aimed, and
while cordially recognising in the Siamese potentate the only man before
ourselves who had taken a real grasp of the umbrella, we must be allowed
to point out how unphilosophically the great man acted in this
particular. His object, plainly, was to prevent