Walking-Stick Papers | Page 5

unfashionable when they
would be ultra-fashionable.

Anybody returning from the Alps should bring back an Alpine stock
with him; every one who has visited Ireland upon his return has
presented some close friend with a blackthorn stick; nobody has made a
walking tour of England without an ash stick. In London all adult males
above the rank of costers carry "sticks"; in New York sticks are
customary with many who would be ashamed to assume them did they
live in the Middle West, where the infrequent sticks to be seen upon the
city streets are in many cases the sign of transient mummers. And yet it
is a curious fact that in communities where the stick is conspicuously
absent from the streets it is commonly displayed in show-windows, in
company with cheap suits and decidedly loud gloves. Another odd
circumstance is this: trashy little canes hawked by sidewalk venders
generally appear with the advent of toy balloons for sale on days of big
parades.
In Jamaica, Long Island, the visitor would probably see canes in the
hands only of prosperous coloured gentlemen. And than this fact
probably nothing throws more light on the winning nature of the
coloured race, and on the character and function of canes. In San
Francisco--but the adequate story, the Sartor Resartus--the World as
Canes, remains to be written.
This, of course, is the merest essay into this vast and significant
subject.

I
THE FISH REPORTER
Men of genius, blown by the winds of chance, have been, now and then,
mariners, bar-keeps, schoolmasters, soldiers, politicians, clergymen,
and what not. And from these pursuits have they sucked the essence of
yarns and in the setting of these activities found a flavour to stir and to
charm hearts untold. Now, it is a thousand pities that no man of genius
has ever been a fish reporter. Thus has the world lost great literary
treasure, as it is highly probable that there is not under the sun any

prospect so filled with the scents and colours of story as that presented
by the commerce in fish.
Take whale oil. Take the funny old buildings on Front Street, out of
paintings, I declare, by Howard Pyle, where the large merchants in
whale oil are. Take salt fish. Do you know the oldest salt-fish house in
America, down by Coenties Slip? Ah! you should. The ghost of old
Long John Silver, I suspect, smokes an occasional pipe in that old place.
And many are the times I've seen the slim shade of young Jim Hawkins
come running out. Take Labrador cod for export to the Mediterranean
lands or to Porto Rico via New York. Take herrings brought to this port
from Iceland, from Holland, and from Scotland; mackerel from Ireland,
from the Magdalen Islands, and from Cape Breton; crabmeat from
Japan; fishballs from Scandinavia; sardines from Norway and from
France; caviar from Russia; shrimp which comes from Florida,
Mississippi, and Georgia, or salmon from Alaska, and Puget Sound,
and the Columbia River.
Take the obituaries of fishermen. "In his prime, it is said, there was not
a better skipper in the Gloucester fishing fleet." Take disasters to
schooners, smacks, and trawlers. "The crew were landed, but lost all
their belongings." New vessels, sales, etc. "The sealing schooner Tillie
B., whose career in the South Seas is well known, is reported to have
been sold to a moving-picture firm." Sponges from the Caribbean Sea
and the Gulf of Mexico. "To most people, familiar only with the
sponges of the shops, the animal as it comes from the sea would be
rather unrecognisable." Why, take anything you please! It is such stuff
as stories are. And as you eat your fish from the store how little do you
reck of the glamour of what you are doing!
However, as it seems to me unlikely that a man of genius will be a fish
reporter shortly I will myself do the best I can to paint the tapestry of
the scenes of his calling. The advertisement in the newspaper read:
"Wanted--Reporter for weekly trade paper." Many called, but I was
chosen. Though, doubtless, no man living knew less about fish than I.
The news stands are each like a fair, so laden are they with magazines
in bright colours. It would seem almost as if there were a different

magazine for every few hundred and seven-tenth person, as the
statistics put these matters. And yet, it seems, there is a vast, a very vast,
periodical literature of which we, that is, magazine readers in general,
know nothing whatever. There is, for one, that fine, old, standard
publication, Barrel and Box, devoted to the subjects and the interests of
the coopering industry; there is, too, The Dried Fruit Packer and
Western Canner, as alert a magazine as