Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1891 — About Umbrellas. [ARTICLE]

About Umbrellas.

In connection with the tea, milk and chocolate rooms now being extensively established over Paris, a depot for umbrellas will be connected with each. In the case of a sudden change of weather, one will have only to enter the nearest tea room, etc.*, select a Sally Gamp, more or new, in silk, alpaca, or cotton, deposit the estimated value of the umbrella, which will at the same time include the sum for hire —6 to 30 bous — for every twenty-four hours. A receipt will be given for the deposit, and the latter will be refunded at any of the tea rooms in the city. Formerly a company existed for lending out umbrellas and parasols by the hour. It had a capital of 200,000* umbrellas. .It failed because the depots for hiring the umbrellas, etc., were the tobacco shops; into which ladies—the best customers—of course declined to enter. The next error was basing the society on new, instead of secondhand and hack umbrellas. During rains, etc., no one overscans your overhead protector, unless it displays rents, or sieve interstices. Only philosophers and individuals suffering in mind, body or estate, disregard holes in umbrellas. Kow next to securing an umbrella when

needed nothing is moic pleasurable than the getting rid of it when no longer required. To be able to part company with it at the nearest branch tea room will prove the successful keynote of the revived scheme. When umbrellas were first introduced into France, toward the close of the reventeenth century, they were exclusively reserved for the use of ladies. A gentleman would have blushed if discovered carrying snch a symbol of effeminacy. It was the parasol which gave birth to the umbrella, and a parasol two centuries ago was as much a family heirloom as lace and jewelry. It was embioidered by the owner, became a thing of beauty, and so a jo v forever. French ladies in the sixteenth century, who as spectators followed deer hunts, carried parasols fringed with gold and ornamented with costly pearls. Waiters at cases and restaurants once supplied clients with •umbrellas, counting upon a gratuity in exchange, but negligence in returning umbrellas ruined the convenience. For a short time in France, when private undertakers existed, it was—as it is at present—considered evidence of greater respect for the deceased to follow on foot instead of ridiDg in a carriage. The undertaker kept a supply of black umbrellas, familiarly called “mortuaries,” that he presented to foot mourners did rain set in. A mute collected as many of the umbrellas as ho could as the recipients passed through the cemetery gate. But the item for compensation for unretumed umbrellas in the undertaker’s bill became so tfce.t funeral Bmbielias had to be abandoned becan e of its extravagance. It was a fact then that funerals on wet days were always the best attended. Perhaps if the fashion had existed when Mozart died the composer’s friends would not have failed to attend his funeral, despite the rain, and posterity would thus have known the whereabouts of the resting place of the celebrity. As “Anthony and Cleopatra” is the popular drama of the day, it tuay be apropos to state that excepting Anthony’s leputation a parasol which he presented to the siren queen was cherished as the most precious of her gifts to her. There is in the Cluny museum an umbrella presented by the Portuguese to Louis XIV. which weighs six pounds. It had to be carried by a valet, similarly as seigueurs had foot boys to carry their turnip w atches. Louis XV. had quite a collection of parasols, so that he might have been called, like his “cousin,” the “King of Burmali,” “Lord of the twenty-four parasols.”