A WONDERFUL INVENTION, 189

and breeches open at knees, and both loose, for they were rather
wanting to keep me cool than to keep me warm, I must not
omit to acknowledge that they were wretchedly made; for if I was
a bad carpenter, I was a worse tailor. However, they were such
as I made very good shift with. And when 1 was abroad, if it
happened to rain, the hair of my waistcoat and cap being outer-
most, I was kept very dry.

After this I spent a great deal of time and pains to make me
an umbrella. I was indeed in great want of one, and had a
great mind to make one. I had seen them made in the Brazils,
where they are very useful in the great heats which are there,
and I felt the heats every jot as great here, and greater too, being
nearer the equinox. Besides, as [ was obliged to be much abroad,
it was a most useful thing to me, as well for the rains as the heats.
I took a world of pains at it, and was a great while before I could
make anything likely to hold; nay, after I thought I had hit the
way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to my mind, but
at last I made one that answered indifferently well. The main
difficulty I found was to make it let down. I could make it
spread, but if it did not let down too and draw in, it was not
portable for me any way but just over my head, which would not
do. However, at last, as I said, I made one to answer, and covered
it with skins, the hair upwards, so that it cast off the rains like
a pent-house, and kept off the sun so effectually that I could walk
out in the hottest of the weather with greater advantage than I
could before in the coolest; and when I had no need of it, could
close it and carry it under my arm.

Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely com-
posed by resigning to the will of God, and throwing myself wholly
upon the disposal of his providence. This made my life better
than sociable; for when I began to regret the want of conversa-
tion I would ask myself whether thus conversing mutually with
my own thoughts, and, as I hope I may say, with even God him-
self by ejaculations, was not better than the utmost enjoyment of
human society in the world?

{ cannot say that after this, for five years, any extraordinary
thing happened to ne, but I lived on in the same course, in the