No, it was not this: the memory of a vanished respectability called for some outward manifestation, and the result was--an umbrella.

A pious castaway might have rigged up a belfry and solaced his Sunday mornings with the mimicry of church-bells; but Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilised mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.
It is not for nothing, either, that the umbrella has become the very foremost badge of modern civilisation--the Urim and Thummim of respectability.

Its pregnant symbolism has taken its rise in the most natural manner.

Consider, for a moment, when umbrellas were first introduced into this country, what manner of men would use them, and what class would adhere to the useless but ornamental cane.

The first, without doubt, would be the hypochondriacal, out of solicitude for their health, or the frugal, out of care for their raiment; the second, it is equally plain, would include the fop, the fool, and the Bobadil.