mply luxury, and I can say with some firmness that it
does not imply dandyism. In a great many Englishmen it means the very
opposite even of lounging. By one of those fantastic paradoxes which
are the mystery of nationality, a walking stick often actually means
walking. It frequently suggests the very reverse of the beau with his
clouded cane; it does not suggest a town type, but rather specially a
country type. It rather implies the kind of Englishman who tramps about
in lanes and meadows and knocks the tops off thistles. It suggests the
sort of man who has carried the stick through his native woods, and
perhaps even cut it in his native woods.

There are plenty of these vigorous loungers, no doubt, in the rural
parts of America, but the idea of a walking stick would not especially
suggest them to Americans; it would not call up such figures like a
fairy wand. It would be easy to trace back the difference to many
English origins, possibly to aristocratic origins, to the idea of the
old squire, a man vigorous and even rustic, but trained to hold a
useless staff rather than a useful tool. It might be suggested that
American citizens do at least so far love freedom as to like to have
their hands free. It might be suggested, on the other hand, that they
keep their hands for the handles of many machines. And that the hand on
a handle is less free than the hand on a stick or even a tool. But these
again are controversial questions and I am only noting a fact.

If an Englishman wished to imagine more or less exactly what the
impression is, and how misleading it is, he could find something like a
parallel in what he himself feels about a fur coat. When I first found
myself among the crowds on the main floor of a New York hotel, my rather
exaggerated impression of the luxury of the place was largely produced
by the number of men in fur coats, and what we should consider rather
ostentatious fur coats, with all the fur outside.

Now an Englishman has a number of atmospheric but largely accidental
associations in connection with a fur coat. I will not say that he
thinks a man in a fur coat must be a wealthy and wicked man; but I do
say that in his own ideal and perfect vision a wealthy and wicked man
would wear a fur coat. Thus I had the sensation of standing in a surging
mob of American millionaires, or even African millionaires; for the
millionaires of Chicago must be like the Knights of the Round Table
compared with the milli