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 the more attached is he to his cane. Canes are
indispensable to the simple vanity of the Bohemian. One of the most
memorable drawings of Steinlen depicts the quaint soul of a child of
the Latin Quarter: an elderly Bohemian, very much frayed, advances
wreathed in the sunshine of his boutonniere and cane. Canes are
invariably an accompaniment of learning. Sylvester Bonnard would of
course not be without his cane; nor would any other true book-worm, as
may be seen any day in the reading-room of the British Museum and of
the New York Public Library. It is, indeed, indisputable that canes,
more than any other