"Now in contiguous drops the floods come down,
Threatening with deluge the devoted town:
To shops in crowds the draggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy:
The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach,
Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach:
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oiled umbrella's sides."

About this time the custom obtained of keeping an Umbrella in the
halls of great houses, to be used in passing from the door to the
carriage. At coffee-houses, too, the same was done.

That the use of the Umbrella was considered far too effeminate for
man, is seen from the following advertisement from the _Female
Tatler_ for December 12th, 1709:--"The young gentleman borrowing
the Umbrella belonging to Wills' Coffee-house, in Cornhill, of the
mistress, is hereby advertised, that to be dry from head to foot on
the like occasion, he shall be welcome to the maid's pattens."

Defoe's description of Robinson Crusoe's Umbrella is, of course,
familiar to all our readers. He makes his hero say that he had seen
Umbrellas used in Brazil, where they were found very useful in the
great heats that were there, and that he constructed his own
instrument in imitation of them, "I covered it with skins," he adds,
"the hair outwards, so that it cast off the rain like a pent-house,
and kept off the sun so effectually, that I could walk out in the
hottest of the weather with greater advantage than I could before in
the coolest." We may also add, that from this description the