of people. And one umbrella for every six persons is certainly
not a very generous distribution. Added to the number made in this
country, are about one-half million which are imported, chiefly from
France and England. You who have read "Robinson Crusoe," remember how he
made his umbrella and covered it with skins, and that is probably the
most curious umbrella you can anywhere read about. Then there have been
umbrellas covered with large feathers that would shed rain like a "duck's
back," and umbrellas with coverings of oil-cloth, of straw, of paper, of
woollen stuffs, until now, nearly all umbrellas are covered either with
silk, gingham, or alpaca. And this brings us to the manufacture of
umbrellas in Philadelphia, where there are more made than in any other
city in America.

If you will take an umbrella in your hand and examine it, you will see
that there are many more different things used in making it than you at
first supposed.

First, there are the "stick," made of wood, "ribs," "stretchers" and
"springs" of steel; the "runner," "runner notch," the "ferule," "cap,"
"bands" and "tips" of brass or nickel; then there are the covering, the
runner "guard" which is of silk or leather, the "inside cap," the
oftentimes fancy handle, which may be of ivory, bone, horn, walrus tusk,
or even mother-of-pearl, or some kind of metal, and, if you will look
sharply, you will find a rivet put in deftly here and there.

For the "sticks" a great variety of wood is used; although all the wood
must be hard, firm, tough, and capable of receiving both polish and
staining. The cheaper sticks are sawed out of plank, chiefly, of maple
and iron wood. They are then "turned" (that is made round), polished and
stained. The "natural sticks," not very long ago, were all imported from
England. But that has been changed, and we now send England a part of our
own supply, which consists principally of hawthorne and huckleberry,
which come from New York and New Jersey, and of oak, ash, hickory, and
wild cherry.

[Illustration: A "DUCK'S BACK" UMBRELLA.]

If you were to see these sticks, often crooked and gnarled, with a piece
of the root left on, you would think they would make very shabby sticks
for umbrellas. But they are sent to a factory where they are steamed and
straitened, and then to a carver, who cuts the gnarled root-end into the
image of a dog or horse's head, or any one of the thousand and one
designs that you may see, many of which