"Epigrammatic remark—Though somewhat down in the mouth he kept a stiff upper lip."
* * * * * * *
Then follows this on umbrellas, evidently the opening of an unwritten essay:
| And, like umbrellas, with their feathers |
| Shield you in all sorts of weathers. |
| MICHAEL DRAYTON. |
"Among all the ingenious engines which man has contrived for his ornament and protection none, certainly, is more richly idiosyncratic than the umbrella. Literary genius has always instinctively recognized this; and doubtless the esoteric fact has been vaguely felt even by the unthinking; but it is a profound truth which, I fear, has had but slight popular appreciation.
"The use of this historic and peculiarly eloquent article of personal property, the umbrella, illustrates pictorially a proverbial allusion to the manifestation of intelligence: it shows that a man has 'sense enough to go in out of the rain.' It reveals not only the profundity of his judgment but the extraordinary play of his cleverness, as it exhibits him as the only animal who after crawling into his hole, figuratively speaking, pulls his hole in after him, or, in other words, carries his roof with him. Further than this, in the idea of carrying an umbrella you find the secret of man's striking success in the world: the intrepidity of his spirit in his tenacious pursuit of his own affairs defies both the black cloud's downpour and the sun's hot eye."
* * * * * * *
There is this, headed
HUMOR