I had been able advantageously to dispose of this cursed umbrella of
the late Lady Waddilove; it is very little calculated for any but a
single lady of slender shape, and though it certainly keeps the rain
off my hat, it only sends it with a double dripping upon my shoulders.
Pish, deuce take the umbrella! I shall catch my death of cold."

These complaints of an affliction that was assuredly sufficient to
irritate the naturally sweet temper of Mr. Brown, only ceased as that
industrious personage paused at the corner of the street, for the
purpose of selecting the driest path through which to effect the
miserable act of crossing to the opposite side. Occupied in
stretching his neck over the kennel, in order to take the fullest
survey of its topography which the scanty and agitated lamps would
allow, the unhappy wanderer, lowering his umbrella, suffered a cross
and violent gust of wind to rush, as if on purpose, against the
interior. The rapidity with which this was done, and the sudden
impetus, which gave to the inflated silk the force of a balloon,
happening to occur exactly at the moment Mr. Brown was stooping with
such wistful anxiety over the pavement, that gentleman, to his
inexpressible dismay, was absolutely lifted, as it were, from his
present footing, and immersed in a running rivulet of liquid mire,
which flowed immediately below the pavement. Nor was this all: for
the wind, finding itself somewhat imprisoned in the narrow receptacle
it had thus abruptly entered, made so strenuous an exertion to
extricate itself, that it turned Lady Waddilove's memorable relic
utterly inside out; so that when Mr. Brown, aghast at the calamity of
his immersion, lifted his eyes to heaven, with a devotion that had in
it more of expostulation than submission, he beheld, by the melancholy
lamps, the apparition of his umbrella,--the exact opposite to its
legitimate conformation, and seeming, with its lengthy stick and