ONE of the best chapters in "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," is where
that amiable and greatly abused angel reproaches her inhuman spouse with
loaning the family umbrella:
"Ah! that's the third umbrella gone since Christmas! What were you to
do? Why, let him go home in the rain. I don't think there was any thing
about _him_ that would spoil. Take cold, indeed! He does not look like
one o' the sort to take cold. He'd better taken cold, than our only
umbrella. Do you hear the rain, Caudle? I say do you _hear the rain_? Do
you hear it against the windows? Nonsense; you can't be asleep with such
a shower as that. Do you _hear_ it, I say? Oh, you _do_ hear it, do you?
Well, that's a pretty flood, I think, to last six weeks, and no stirring
all the time out of the house. Poh! don't think to fool _me_, Caudle:
_he_ return the umbrella! As if any body ever _did_ return an umbrella!
There--do you hear it? Worse and worse! Cats and dogs for six
weeks--always six weeks--and no umbrella!
"I should like to know how the children are to go to school, to-morrow.
They shan't go through _such_ weather, _that_ I'm determined. No; they
shall stay at home, and never learn anything, sooner than go and get
wet. And when they grow up, I wonder who they'll have to thank for
knowing nothing. People who can't feel for their children ought never to
_be_ fathers.
"But _I_ know why you lent the umbrella--_I_ know very well. I was going
out to tea to mother's, to-morrow;--you _knew_ that very well; and you
did it on purpose. Don't tell me; _I_ know: you don't want me to go, and
take every mean advantage to hinder me. But don't you think it, Caudle.
No; if it comes down in buckets-full, I'll go all the more: I will; and
what's more, I'll walk every step of the way; and you know that will
give me my death," &c., &c., &c.