geant, and,
perhaps as proof of this, a photograph of himself wearing a tin hat and
with a cane in his hand. It is also to be observed now and then that a
lady in uniformed service appears to regard it as an added military
touch to swing a cane.

Women as well as men play their part in the colourful story of the
cane. The shepherdess's crook might be regarded as the precursor of
canes for ladies. In Merrie England in the age when the May-pole
flourished it was fashionable, we know from pictures, for comely misses
and grandes dames to sport tall canes mounted with silver or gold and
knotted with a bow of ribbon. The dowager duchess of romantic story
has always appeared leaning upon her cane. Do not we so see the rich
aunt of Hawden Crawley? And Mr. Walpole's Duchess of Wrexe, certainly,
was supported in her domination of the old order of things by a cane.
The historic old croons of our own early days smoked a clay or a
corn-cob pipe and went bent upon a cane.

In England to-day it is swagger for women to carry sticks--in the
country. And here the thoughtful spectator of the human scene notes a
nice point. It is not etiquette, according to English manners, for a
woman to carry a cane in town. Some American ladies who admire and
would emulate English customs have not been made acquainted with this
delicate nuance of taste, and so are very 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 f