Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1884 — Should Women Carry Umbrellas? [ARTICLE]

Should Women Carry Umbrellas?

Humph! Aud so everybody on your staff is audacious enough, to advocate the legislative prohibition to woman of the means of keeping her head dry when it rains. We do hope that he is a married man with at least a half-doz-en unmarried and unmarringeable daughters, and that they and his wife will all l>e caught out in an April shower with their new Easter bonnets on, and will march into his sanctum and refuse, to stir .until he shall eall coupes and let them stop at Mme. Fussandfcathors and 4 order, seven new bonnets. Serve him right if he had to pledge his watch to got rid of them. But the indications are that he is a musty, crusty old bachelor, disappointed in his youth, and ever on the alert to work off his spleen against woman in general and somebody in particular. Well, double or single, he is a man, and. wo will wager a new hat that we can tell just how he carries a closed umbrella. Ho “is born that way.” It is a physical impossibility for him “to do it otherwise.” He will balance it on the top of his shoulder, or else hug it under his arm a square right angle to his side, with the greater part protruding in the real-, and then, pray, who holds th@ “death-dealing weapon” above “danger line?” and who can do the most harm, he or a weman with an umbrella at full sail? He can, probatum est, for we were down town yesterday, and in a crowd came within range of the metal tip of an umbrella .penciled upon the shoulder of a man. We knocked it away m self defense; he growled- and knocked baok, thenwo turned and knocked again. Result: He has been released on bail to await consequences. Letter to Boston Globe.