Walking-Stick Papers | Page 3

carried canes, frequently handsome
gold-headed ones, especially if they were ministers. Bishops, or
"Presiding Elders;" when, in those mellow times, it was the custom for
a congregation to present its minister with a gold-headed cane duly

inscribed. Our fathers of some consequence carried canes of a
gentlemanly pattern, often ones with ivory handles. Though in the days
when those of us now sometime grown were small one had to have
arrived at the dignity of at least middle-age before it was seemly for
one to carry a cane. In England, however, and particularly at Eton, it
has long been a common practice for small aristocrats to affect canes.
The dandies, fops, exquisites, and beaux of picturesque and courtly
ages were, of course, very partial to canes, and sometimes wore them
attached to the wrist by a thong. It has been the custom of the Surgeon
of the King of England to carry a "Gold Headed Cane." This cane has
been handed down to the various incumbents of this office since the
days of Dr. John Radcliffe, who was the first holder of the cane. It has
been used for two hundred years or more by the greatest physicians and
surgeons in the world, who succeeded to it. "The Gold Headed Cane"
was adorned by a cross-bar at the top instead of a knob. The fact is
explained by Munk, in that Radcliffe, the first owner, was a rule unto
himself and possibly preferred this device as a mark of distinction
beyond the knob used by physicians in general. Men of genius now and
then have found in their choice of a cane an opportunity for the play of
their eccentricity, such a celebrated cane being the tall wand of
Whistler. Among the relics of great men preserved in museums for the
inspiration of the people canes generally are to be found. We have all
looked upon the cane of George Washington at Mount Vernon and the
walking-stick of Carlyle in Cheyne Walk. And is each not eloquent of
the man who cherished it?
Freak canes are displayed here and there by persons of a pleasantly
bizarre turn of mind: canes encased in the hide of an elephant's tail,
canes that have been intricately carven by some Robinson Crusoe, or
canes of various other such species of curiosity. There is a veteran New
York journalist who will be glad to show any student of canes one
which he prizes highly that was made from the limb of a tree upon
which a friend of his was hanged. In our age of handy inventions a type
of cane is manufactured in combination with an umbrella.
Canes are among the useful properties of the theatre. He would be a

decidedly incomplete villain who did not carry a cane. Imaginative
literature is rich in canes. Who ever heard of a fairy godmother without
a cane? Who with any feeling for terror has not been startled by the tap,
tap of the cane of old Pew in "Treasure Island"? There is an awe and a
pathos in canes, too, for they are the light to blind men. And the
romance of canes is further illustrated in this: they, with rags and the
wallet, have been among the traditional accoutrements of beggars, the
insignia of the "dignity springing from the very depth of desolation; as,
to be naked is to be so much nearer to the being a man, than to go in
livery." J. M. Barrie was so fond of an anecdote of a cane that he
employed it several times in his earlier fiction. This was the story of a
young man who had a cane with a loose knob, which in society he
would slyly shake so that it tumbled off, when he would exclaim: "Yes,
that cane is like myself; it always loses its head in the presence of
ladies."
Canes have figured prominently in humour. The Irishman's shillelagh
was for years a conspicuous feature of the comic press. And there will
instantly come to every one's mind that immortal passage in "Tristram
Shandy." Trim is discoursing upon life and death:
"Are we not here now, continued the Corporal (striking the end of his
stick perpendicularly upon the floor, so as to give an idea of health and
stability)--and are we not (dropping his hat upon the ground) gone! in a
moment!--'Twas infinitely striking! Susannah burst into a flood of
tears."
Canes are not absent from poetry. Into your ears already has come the
refrain of "The Last Leaf":
"And totters o'er the ground, With his cane."
And, doubtless, floods of instances of canes that the world will not
willingly let die will occur to one upon a moment's reflection.
Canes are inseparable from art. All artists carry them; and the poorer
the artist