They have a qualification standing in their lobbies; they carry a sufficient stake in the common-weal below their arm.

One who bears with him an umbrella--such a complicated structure of whalebone, of silk, and of cane, that it becomes a very microcosm of modern industry--is necessarily a man of peace.

A half-crown cane may be applied to an offender's head on a very moderate provocation; but a six-and-twenty shilling silk is a possession too precious to be adventured in the shock of war.
These are but a few glances at how umbrellas (in the general) came to their present high estate.

But the true Umbrella-Philosopher meets with far stranger applications as he goes about the streets.
Umbrellas, like faces, acquire a certain sympathy with the individual who carries them: indeed, they are far more capable of betraying his trust; for whereas a face is given to us so far ready made, and all our power over it is in frowning, and laughing, and grimacing, during the first three or four decades of life, each umbrella is selected from a whole shopful, as being most consonant to the purchaser's disposition.

An undoubted power of diagnosis rests with the practised Umbrella-Philosopher.