MRS. CAUDLE'S UMBRELLA.
One of the best chapters in "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," is where that amiable and greatly abused angel reproaches her inhuman spouse with loaning the family umbrella:
"Ah! that's the third umbrella gone since Christmas! What were you to do? Why, let him go home in the rain. I don't think there was any thing about him that would spoil. Take cold, indeed! He does not look like one o' the sort to take cold. He'd better taken cold, than our only umbrella. Do you hear the rain, Caudle? I say do you hear the rain? Do you hear it against the windows? Nonsense; you can't be asleep with such a shower as that. Do you hear it, I say? Oh, you do hear it, do you? Well, that's a pretty flood, I think, to last six weeks, and no stirring all the time out of the house. Poh! don't think to fool me, Caudle: he return the umbrella! As if any body ever did return an umbrella! There—do you hear it? Worse and worse! Cats and dogs for six weeks—always six weeks—and no umbrella!
"I should like to know how the children are to go to school, to-morrow. They shan't go through such weather, that I'm determined. No; they shall stay at home, and never learn anything, sooner than go and get wet. And when they grow up, I wonder who they'll have to thank for knowing nothing. People who can't feel for their children ought never to be fathers.
"But I know why you lent the umbrella—I know very well. I was going out to tea to mother's, to-morrow;—you knew that very well; and you did it on purpose. Don't tell me; I know: you don't want me to go, and take every mean advantage to hinder me. But don't you think it, Caudle. No; if it comes down in buckets-full, I'll go all the more: I will; and what's more, I'll walk every step of the way; and you know that will give me my death," &c., &c., &c.