put my hat on and carried his own in his hand. Was he a Tory?
Was he a Radical? It can't have been a Labour man, for no Labour man could
put a silk hat on in a moment of abstraction. The thing would scorch his
brow. Fancy Will Crooks in a silk hat! One would as soon dare to play with
the fancy of the Archbishop of Canterbury in a bowler--a thought which
seems almost impious. It is possible, of course, that the gentleman who
took my silk umbrella did really make a mistake. Perhaps if he knew the
owner he would return it with his compliments. The thing has been done. Let
me give an illustration. I have myself exchanged umbrellas--often. I hope I
have done it honestly, but one can never be quite sure. Indeed, now I come
to think of it, that silk umbrella itself was not mine. It was one of a
long series of exchanges in which I had sometimes gained and sometimes
lost. My most memorable exchange was at a rich man's house where I had been
invited to dine with some politicians. It was summer-time, and the weather
being dry I had not occasion for some days afterwards to carry an umbrella.
Then one day a sensation reigned in our household. There had been
discovered in the umbrella-stand an umbrella with a gold band and a gold
tassle, and the name of a certain statesman engraved upon it. There had
never been such a super-umbrella in our house before. Before its golden
splendours we were at once humbled and terrified--humbled by its
magnificence, terrified by its presence. I felt as though I had been caught
in the act of stealing the British Empire. I wrote a hasty letter to the
owner, told him I admired his politics, but had never hoped to steal his
umbrella; then hailed a cab, and took the umbrella and the note to the
nearest dispatch office.

He was very nice about it, and in returning my own umbrella took all the
blame on himself. "What," he said, "between the noble-looking gentleman who
thrust a hat on my head, and the second noble-looking gentleman who handed
me a coat, and the third noble-looking gentleman who put an umbrella in my
hand, and the fourth noble-looking gentleman who flung me into a carriage,
I hadn't the least idea what I was taking. I was too bewildered by all the
noble flunkeys to refuse anything that was offered me."

Be it observed, it was the name on the umbrella that saved the situation in
this case. That is the way to circumvent the man with an umbrella
conscience. I see him eyeing his exchange with a sec