The Parson's Umbrella

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We see the vestibule of a little country meeting house on a rainy day and some of the members of the congregation (all colored people) coming out, to find the rain beating down and endangering their good "Sunday-go-to-meeting-clothes." We see the temptation which the stack of umbrellas in the corner offers, and to which most of them succumb, and then, when the congregation has entirely departed, we see the old parson left to go home in the rain unprotected. He proves to be not without resource, however, for in the next scene he prepares a notice to his congregation, lettered by his own hand, and a piece of comic literature in itself. It intimates that he has a shrewd suspicion who took his umbrella, but will be lenient if it is tossed over his back fence that night. At the evening service this notice is read and posted on the front of the little church. Then in the dead of night we see the borrowers of other people's umbrellas doing their best to make amends and save their skins, and when the morning dawns and we get a view of the parson's back yard we see the comic side of Shakespeare's famous sentence, "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all."