Page:The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, a Book for an Idle Holiday - Jerome (1886).djvu/86

 precisely the same cause, and who then giggles, and then sulks, and who is rude, and affectionate, and bad-tempered, and jolly, and boisterous, and silent, and passionate, and cold, and stand-offiishstand-offish [sic], and flopping, all in one minute (mind I don't say this. It is those poets. And they are supposed to be connoisseurs of this sort of thing); but in the weather, the disadvantages of the system are more apparent. A woman's tears do not make one wet, but the rain does; and her coldness does not lay the foundations of asthma and rheumatism, as the east wind is apt to. I can prepare for, and put up with a regularly bad day, but these ha'porth of all sorts kind of days do not suit me. It aggravates me to see a bright blue sky above me, when I am walking along wet through; and there is something so exasperating about the way the sun comes out, smiling after a drenching shower, and seems to say: "Lord, love you, you don't mean to say you're wet? Well, I am surprised. Why it was only my fun."

They don't give you time to open or shut your umbrella in an English April, especially if it is an "automaton" one—the umbrella I mean, not the April.

I bought an "automaton" once in April, and I did have a time with it! I wanted an umbrella, and I went into a shop in the Strand, and told them so, and they said—