Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1881 — Driving with the Parasol. [ARTICLE]

Driving with the Parasol.

The other evening the Jester was bathing his eyes in cold water, and suspended the operation long enough to remark : “If a woman can’t take her parasol to heaven when she dies, she won’t be happy there. She will come back after An impressive quiet followed this dogmatic statement, and the parasols of the court knew some of them where in for it, “We were driving this afternoon,” the aggrieved Jester resumed, “ and the Erincess kindly shaded my head with er parasol. It was very '.kind, indeed. It limited my view of the country, at times, to my knee and the dashboard oi the wagon. Whenever we met a team, especially if the road was very narrow, the princess lowered her parasol between myself and the passing wagon, so that 1 turned out by faith, or stood on my head to catch a glimpse of the colliding wheels. When we started down a steep hill, she dropped the parasol between me and the horses, and?! trusted to the good sense of the animals to keep out oi the ditch. When we met any acquaintances to whom I wished to bow, she knocked my hat into my eyes. When she would point my admiring gaze to some exquisitely tinted autumn leaves, She jabbed a projecting parasol rib into my eye. When she turned to speak to any one in the rear.seat, she rasped, the back of my neck. Oft as the carriage struck a stone or lurched over a ’ hit., she prodded my long suffering head with vicious little jabs. I drew, my/.head down between my shoulders and sat crouched and bent, tut the remorseless parasol still pursued me. 1! I have been pelted and rasped and prodded, and all from a mistaken sense of kindness. A woman’s unselfishness and kindness of heart always prompts her to hold hei parasol over the man who drives. And, if the man who drives is allowed to choose 1 for himself, he will choose sunstroke in preference to the parasol every time. 1 do not complain, mind you. I merely make a simple statement of plain fact. Any man who has to driv.e a pair ol horses while some gentle-hearted woman holds a parasol over him knows what 1 have suffered. And when she holds an umbrella it is infinitely worse. Then the man is utterly and hopelessly ex tinguished, and the material world is tc im only a wild, blank chaos of alpaca and whalebone.” But here her little serene highness closed the debate by deciding that the nose caught it. but the eyes had it, and without appealing from the decision ol the chair the house adjourned.—Burdette.