Has The Umbrella Fad

There is a man on the North Side who has the umbrella fad. It would hardly be fair to teil his name, as it was learned iu confidence, aud the fad might uot be regarded as a mere eccentricity by some people who have suffered from it and they znight be tenipted to complain to the pólice. Again, everybody who has lost au umbrella - and that means a majority of the people of Chicago- would look up his address in the directory and sweep dowu npon hiru with the hope that his lost property might be iu his collection. There are other men who have a weakness for taking uinbrellas, but no man is known to have cwried it to so great au extreme as this one. He has a collection numbering 400 umbrellas of all kinds. A good many of them were bought. Some of them were borrowed from friends, with and without their permissiou, and others were acquired in other ways whioh it would be hardly polite to inention. The man is a good citizen in other respecta, but he is a victim of the umbrella habit, and when he sees an umbrella he is compelled to struggle very hard to resist the tempta;ion to make himself its owuer. Usually he yields to the temptation, and the coveted prize is transferred to his col[ectiou. The umbrella collector does not make any great display of his collection. The umbrellas are piled up in a big closet in lis bedroom, and he very se-ldom visits it. Now and then he looks over them and counts them with satisf action. The ast time he counted them there were 398 in the closet. He has added a few ;o his collection since that time. In every other way except this passion for umbrellas, which amounts to a mania, the man is perfectly sane. His Iriends regard him as a very clever man, and he holds a responsible posi;ion iu a big wholesale house down ;own. But umbrellas are his weakness. 3e is a victim of the umbrella habit ust as another man might be a victim of the opium habit or rnorphine habit, and his relativos are in constant fear ;hat the habit may some day sret him nto