r
object for attendance besides the mere desire to save his fines: to wit,
the chance of drawing on himself the favourable consideration of his
teachers. This would be merely following in the good tendency, which
has been so noticeable during all this session, to increase and multiply
student societies and clubs of every sort. Nor would it be a matter of
much difficulty. The united societies would form a nucleus: one of the
class-rooms at first, and perhaps afterwards the great hall above the
library, might be the place of meeting. There would be no want of
attendance or enthusiasm, I am sure; for it is a very different thing to
speak under the bushel of a private club on the one hand, and, on the
other, in a public place, where a happy period or a subtle argument may
do the speaker permanent service in after life. Such a club might end,
perhaps, by rivalling the "Union" at Cambridge or the "Union" at Oxford.

IV

THE PHILOSOPHY OF UMBRELLAS[36]

It is wonderful to think what a turn has been given to our whole Society
by the fact that we live under the sign of Aquarius,--that our climate
is essentially wet. A mere arbitrary distinction, like the
walking-swords of yore, might have remained the symbol of foresight and
respectability, had not the raw mists and dropping showers of our island
pointed the inclination of Society to another exponent of those virtues.
A ribbon of the Legion of Honour or a string of medals may prove a
person's courage; a title may prove his birth; a professorial chair his
study and acquirement; but it is the habitual carriage of the umbrella
that is the stamp of Respectability. The umbrella has become the
acknowledged index of social position.

Robinson Crusoe presents us with a touching instance of the hankering
after them inherent in the civilised and educated mind. To the
superficial, the hot suns of Juan Fernandez may sufficiently account for
his quaint choice of a luxury; but surely one who had borne the hard
labour of a seaman under the tropics for all these years could have
supported an excursion after goats or a peaceful _constitutional_ arm in
arm with the nude Friday. No, it was not this: the memory of a vanished
respectability called for some outward manifestation, and the result
was--an umbrella. A pious castaway might have rigged up a belfry and
solaced his Sunday mornings with the mimicry of church-bells; but Crusoe
was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbr