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read this story then answer questions:

if one were to produce a careful statistical tabulation of the men who use umbrellas, one would determine that when the rains begin the umbrellas disappear. it’s only natural: the umbrella is too fine, too delicate and lovely an article for water to be allowed to ruin it.

the umbrella, though we are led to believe otherwise, was not made for the rain. it was made to be carried on the arm like an enormous ornamental bat and to allow one the opportunity to put on british airs as the atmospheric conditions demanded. if one were to research the history of the umbrella, one would discover that it was created with a purpose far different from that which formal umbrellists wish to attribute to it—those gentlemen who mistakenly take their umbrellas to the street when it looks like rain, unaware that they are exposing their precious devices to a washing that never figured into their plan.

cork hats and newspapers of more than eight pages were invented for the rain. furthermore, before the cork hat and the newspaper of more than eight pages, rain had been invented for just this purpose: to fall on the happy pedestrian who has no reason in the world not to enjoy a shower of pure water from the heavens, still the best prevention against baldness ever invented.

the reduction in umbrellas during the rainy season demonstrates that there are still a goodly number of gentlemen who know what this black, molded tree with metal branches is for, a device invented by someone who grew desperate in the face of the compelling concept of being unable to fold up a bush and take it for a stroll, dangling from his arm. an intelligent woman once said: ‘’the umbrella is an article proper to the desk.” and so it is, and it is well that it is so, for it presumes that next to every desk there ought to be a coat rack and, hanging on the coat rack, an umbrella. a dry one, however. for a wet umbrella is an accident, a barbarism, a spelling mistake that must be spread open in a corner until it is fully corrected and has become a true umbrella once again. an item to be carried in the street, to be used to startle friends and—in the worst of cases—to fend off one’s creditors.

1. choose any two passages from “uses and abuses of the umbrella,” one or two sentences long, that you find humorous.

2. write 1 to 2 paragraphs describing what makes them funny? explain how the author has used tone and voice to create humor.