A worthy little Frenchman of our acquaintance was ordered by his medical man to take a course of shower-baths. Such things being unknown to him in his fatherland, he of course found the first essay remarkably unpleasant, but with native ingenuity he soon discovered a remedy. On our asking him how he liked the hydropathic system, he replied, "Oh, mais c'est charmant, mon ami; I always take my parapluie wid me into de bath." Douglas Jerrold, in his well-known "Punch's Letters to his Son," gives an anecdote of which we can only say, si non _è vero, è ben trovato_. It at all events illustrates the frightful morality that exists with regard to borrowing Umbrellas. "Hopkins once lent Simpson, his next-door neighbour, an Umbrella. You will judge of the intellect of Hopkins, not so much from the act of lending an Umbrella, but from his insane endeavour to get it back again. "It poured in torrents, Hopkins had an urgent call. Hopkins knocked at Simpson's door. 'I want my Umbrella.' Now Simpson had also a call in a directly opposite way to Hopkins; and with the borrowed Umbrella in his hand, was advancing to the threshold. 'I tell you,' roared Hopkins, 'I want my Umbrella.' 'Can't have it,' said Simpson. 'Why, I want to go to the East-end; it rains in torrents; what'--screamed Hopkins--'what am I to do for an Umbrella?' "'Do!' answered Simpson, darting from the door, 'do as I did--BORROW ONE.'" The Umbrella has been most successfully introduced on the stage. What, for instance, would Paul Pry have been without that valuable implement for which to inquire with his stereotyped "Hope I don't intrude?" Or his French successor, the nobleman in "The Grand Duchess," who inquires, in plaintive accents, for "Le parapluie de ma mere," just after Schneider has been declaiming about her father's sabre? Merely to bring a big Umbrella on the stage is an acknowledged way of raising a laugh. Mrs. Gamp again, with her receptacle for unconsidered trifles, cannot be realised apart from her Umbrella. And then, those hired waiters who come into our houses with an Umbrella of graceful proportions, and emerge towards the small hours with a most plethoric parapluie, which looks as if it had been regaling on the good things as well as its master! It used to appear to us a comical sight, years back, in the old city of Paris, to see the National Guard going to exercise with a musket in one hand and an Umbrella in the other, and we dare say it was a very sensible plan after all, and might have been imitated with success before Sebastopol. A stout steel Umbrella would offer no contemptible shelter to a rifleman. This circumstance, too, may throw a light on a hitherto obscure passage in "Macbeth," where Birnam Wood moves to Dunsinane--for it is just possible that the soldiers cut down the branches to serve them as a protection from the rain. We throw out this as a hint to any enterprising manager.