"Umbrellas, like faces, acquire a certain sympathy with the individual who carries them…. May it not be said of the bearers of these inappropriate umbrellas, that they go about the streets "with a lie in their right hand?"… Except in a very few cases of hypocrisy joined to a powerful intellect, men, not by nature, umbrellarians, have tried again and again to become so by art, and yet have failed—have expended their patrimony in the purchase of umbrella after umbrella, and yet have systematically lost them, and have finally, with contrite spirits and shrunken purses, given up their vain struggle, and relied on theft and borrowing for the remainder of their lives."
An umbrella is a folding canopy supported by wooden or metal ribs that is mounted on a wooden, metal, or plastic pole. It is usually designed to protect a person against sun or rain. Initially, they were used in warmer countries for shade from the sun, but in modern times they evolved to also be used for protection from rain. Etymologically, the term umbrella is to be used when protecting from the
"Of doues I haue a dainty paire Which, when you please to take the aier, About your head shall gently houer, Your cleere browe from the sunne to couer, And with their nimble wings shall fan you That neither cold nor heate shall tan you, And like umbrellas, with their feathers Sheeld you in all sorts of weathers."
"The inseparable gold umbrella which in that country [Burma] as much denotes the grandee as the star or garter does in England."
"Good housewives all the winters rage despise, Defended by the riding-hoods disguise; Or, underneath the umbrellas oily shade, Safe through the wet on clinking pattens tread, Let Persian dames the umbrellas ribs display, To guard their beauties from the sunny ray; Or sweating slaves support the shady load, When eastern monarchs show their state abroad; Britain in winter only knows its aid, To guard from chilling showers the walking maid."
"It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. The umbrella has become the acknowledged index of social position…. Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilized mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with."
"We bear our shades about us; self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste without a tree."
"When my water-proof umbrella proved a sieve, sieve, sieve, When my shiny new umbrella proved a sieve."