There is a class who cultivate silk umbrellas. It is a prevalent idea among many men that a silk umbrella is an exceedingly _genteel_ thing. They therefore have an article of this kind, which they are always carrying in a neat careful manner, so as to show that it is silk. They seem to feel as if they thought all right when they have their silk umbrella in their hand: it is a kind of patent of respectability. With a silk umbrella they could meet the highest personages in the land, and not be abashed. A silk umbrella is, indeed, a thing of such vast effect, that they would be content to go in humble guise in every other respect, provided they only had this saving clause to protect them. Nay, it is not too much to suppose them entertaining this belief, that five-and-twenty shillings put forth on a good silk umbrella produces as much value in dignity as five pounds spent upon good broad-cloth. How some men do fondle and cultivate silk umbrellas! There is a species of cultivators who may in some cases be very respectable, and entitled to our forbearance, but are, in others, worthy of a little ridicule. I mean the health-seekers; the men who go out at five in the morning to cultivate an appetite, and regularly chill every sharp-set evening party they attend, by sitting like Melancholy retired, ostentatiously insisting that they “never take supper.” When a health-seeker takes a walk, he keeps his coat wide open, his vest half open—seems, in short, to woo the contact of the air—and evidently regrets very much that he cannot enjoy it in the manner of a bath. As he proceeds, he consumes air, as a steam-boat consumes coal; insomuch that, when he leaves the place, you would actually think the atmosphere has a fatigued and exhausted look, as if the whole oxygen had been absorbed to supply his individual necessities. Wherever this man goes, the wind rises behind him, by reason of the vacuum which he has produced. He puffs, pants, fights, strives, struggles for health. When he returns from his morning walk, he first looks in the glass to congratulate himself on the bloom which he has been cultivating in his cheek, and thereafter sits down to solace the appetite which he finds he has nursed into a kind of fury. At any ordinary time, he could spring from his bed at nine o’clock, and devour four cups of tea, with bread, ham, eggs, and haddocks, beyond reckoning. But he thinks it necessary to walk four hours, for the purpose of enabling himself to take eight cups, and a still more unconscionable proportion of bread, ham, eggs, and haddocks. He may be compared, in some measure, to the fat oxen which are sometimes shown about as wonders, though apparently there is nothing less wonderful, the obvious natural means being taken. These oxen, if left to themselves in a good park, would become very respectable oxen—a little _en-bon-point_, perhaps, but no more. But, being treated otherwise, they are rendered unnecessarily fat and unwieldy; and so it is with the