“Well—yes—” replied the lender, astounded at such outrageous impudence; “yes; but—but—but what am I to do?”
“Do?” replied the other, as he threw up the top, and walked off; “do? do as I did: borrow one!”
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 [pg 568] all this 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 any thing, 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.
The satire of the following lines, upon that species of sentimental song-writing which prevailed a few years ago to a much greater extent than at present, is somewhat broad; but any one who remembers the feeble and affected trash which has hitherto been set to music, and sung by lachrymose young ladies and gentlemen, will not consider it one whit too much deserved.
I.
“My lute hath only one sad tone,