I Carry a Cane

IN the American scene a man who carries a cane except to church or a party separates himself from the common walk. His cane is an anomaly. No American newspaper would think to ask, as did the London Chronicle in 1762, ‘Do not some of us strut about with walking-sticks as long as hickory poles, or else with a yard of varnished cane scraped taper . . . which switch we hug under our arms?’ The practice, I imagine, was copy-catted in the colonies, but patriotically abandoned by most during and after the Revolution. A few clung; and as time went on the present convention became established.

It is as true as when Plautus said it that men do more things by habit than by reason; and that, as I tell the curious, is why I carry a cane. I call it a stick; but the curious seem always to call it a cane, this name being apparently associated with its legitimate use by the aged or infirm. ‘Do you,’ they ask, hinting at some secret infirmity, ‘need a cane?’ And then — ‘But why do you carry it?’ It is a harmless habit whose many advantages could not have been an incentive. These an habitual canecarrier can learn only by long experience.

Looking far enough back, however, it becomes evident that evolution needed a cane, and that man and his cane descended from the tree together. Although there is now difference of informed opinion as to whether man descended from a monkey, it seems agreed that he descended from a tree. Time and again, for accidents must have happened, he came down and climbed back. But at long last, by happy juxtaposition of a reaching, though rudimentary, hand and an unreliable branch, he brought his cane with him — a stout limb, torn from the parent trunk, which enabled him to stand erect, survey the plain, and take his first faltering but manly steps. Others watched from the tree, tore off their canes, and descended more cautiously. Others heard of it. Wherever they went they took their canes with them. The cane of Pithecanthropus, better known as the Java Man, had, I cannot but believe, long mouldered into dust somewhere in the neighborhood of his more enduring skull.

Professor Julius Lippert, in his Die Kulturgeschichte in einzelnen Hauptstücken, says that the staff — by which obviously he means this first cane or stick — ‘must be regarded as the very foundation of man’s external equipment.’ As the legs strengthened, the staff shortened: it became a club, and, in combination with stone or metal, a tool or a weapon. The staff proper, sharpened at one end, was a spear as well as a walking-stick; curved at one end, it continued cane but was also crook, a noteworthy improvement when shepherds pursued their sheep. For pastoral suggestion the crook was retained in the cane and crosier of an archbishop, and, thus associated with religion, in the pilgrim’s staff. Variously ornamented for royal use, Pithecanthropus’s rude stick came in time to be at once a cane and a sceptre. The churchgoer is still a pilgrim; and Mrs. Post advises a plain stick of Malacca or other wood, ornamented at most with a plain silver band or top, as the accompaniment of formal male dress. The advice makes it incumbent, and a gentleman may do no less. What separates the habitual canecarrier is that he carries his cane with the informal attire commonly designated as his business suit.

It should, I think, be fairly evident, in the restricted sense in which the businesssuited use the word, that I need no cane. As likely as not I am carrying it without visible need, walking on sound legs, the stick projecting before me at a downward angle, and, if somebody tries unexpectedly to cross my path, promptly tripping him up. This is rare and his own fault; but it may happen, especially in a railway station, and one should always be careful not to carry his stick that way in that place. If it does happen, it were best in a railway station, for there the heedless, one-idea’d fellow will probably pick himself up and go on without looking back. Well he knows, even while being upset, that no train will wait for him to stop and ask a stranger why he carries a cane. Later, I hope, he will remember his Shakespeare: —

But there are other uses than discouraging undignified haste. As Professor Lippert wrote, ‘the staff was an artificial extension of the arm,’ and it will often happen to any man, though customary canelessness keep him from realizing it, that such extension would be serviceable. The other day, for example, I stood on a curb estimating the speed of an approaching motor truck and debating whether to stop or go. The wind blew. I had my staff in my hand, resting on it as Jacob (see Hebrews 11.21) when he worshiped. I was still undecided when my hat went — in a graceful arc. It came down on its brim and looked, so I could not help thinking, as if I still had it on and were being swallowed up by the pavement — like a pitiless quicksand. The horrified driver applied his brake. The truck quivered and stopped — directly over my hat.

A caneless man would have had to crawl under the truck. He would have looked like a baby, risked death, and soiled the knees of his business suit. With my artificially extended arm I extracted my hat. The driver and I saluted each other, he with his hand and I with my stick, and the truck moved on.

This incident was exceptional (like tripping the man up, and I have been glad ever since that he was n’t a lady), but the loss, chase, and recovery of the hat are a common experience. A caneless man may then run till he pants, stopping, stooping, reaching, straightening, and again running; whereas with an artificially lengthened arm he might have pinned the fugitive to the pavement and had it back on his head almost before anybody else knew what had happened. Common, too, is the occasion when a man must knock on a door; then the caneless man abuses his bones, but I knock with my stick. It is useful to draw maps, diagrams, or imaginative pictures in sand, mud, or gravel. Kipling refers to the antiquity of this practice, —

and I think would agree with me that Adam walked in the Garden with the same stick. Every man must sometimes willy-nilly converse patiently while standing up in public, and in this emergency a stick to lean on is next best to a seat. I have been told, though I have had no opportunity to try it, how to repel assault and kill the assailant with two movements of the cane. He rushes. I point my stick at his middle. He promptly bends over. I sidestep and strike him at the base of his skull. He falls dead and I go on my way, no doubt twirling my stick. Other uses — to knock the ashes from the pipe, to summon the taxi, to salute the acquaintance in the motor car, to remove the newspaper that the vandal has thrown on the sidewalk, etc., etc. — will occur to any habitual cane-carrier.

‘Le legislateur des Hebreux, Moïse,’ wrote M. Rene-Marie Cazal in his Essai historique, anecdotique sur le parapluie, l’ombrelle et la canne, ‘avait change sa canne en serpent pour vaincre l’incrédulité de Pharaon; il avait separe les eaux de la mer Rouge en etendant sa canne sur les flots; au milieu du desert, il avait etanche la soif de tout son peuple en frappant de sa canne des rochers steriles d’ou jaillirent des sources d’eau limpide.’

Here some reader may object that Scripture calls it a rod. I would remind him that canes and rods have both been correctionally used. The well-known rod mentioned by Solomon was reasonably as long as the cane M. Cazal tells me Louis XIV threw out of the window. He was peeved by the Duc de Lauzun — and out went his cane. ‘For not to strike with it,’ cried he, ‘a gentleman!’ I would remind him also of two lines in an ancient ballad: —

But enough and enough. In the time of Louis XIII, M. Cazal tells me, ‘tous les gentilshommes portaient des jolies Cannes,’ some of which were hollow, and through them, like little wanton boys that play with bean blowers, gentlemen blew at ladies ‘des bonbons entoures de declarations et de poetiques hommages.’ It was a pretty custom. I am glad that M. Cazal, now I hope carrying his cane under his wing, did not omit it.

But it is only when, like Moses, one habitually carries a stick that he knows its companionability and becomes attached to it as a smoker to his pipe. Stick and pipe, indeed, seem to go together. I find myself disappointed that Hazlitt, afoot on a journey and enumerating the blue sky, green turf, winding road, and dinner to come, did not include a stick in his hand and a pipe in his mouth. ‘I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy,’ he wrote, describing behavior on a ‘lone heath.’ Plainly he had no pipe in his mouth; and had he carried a cane I think he would have added, ‘I throw my cane in the air, I catch my cane as it comes down.’ It is, I grant you, but a wooden comrade; yet man has a way of coming to regard with affection his pleasanter inanimate associates. So a tobacconist might have become attached to his Indian, a pilgrim to his staff, or, as M. Cazal would add, ‘Moïse à sa canne.’ But who carries his stick only to church or a party can never know this companionship. His stick might be anybody’s, provided it would not offend Mrs. Post; and if Mrs. Post said so he would bedeck it with ribbons like Charles II. Such a man, in short, honestly wonders why I carry a cane.

For myself, I would have no cane without a crook, and am well pleased that my staff has again come to be called a stick. So I believe it was when the first canecarriers stood in the vestibule of recorded time. In the dawn of speech a sound meaning ‘tree’ would naturally have preceded a sound meaning ‘stick’ or ‘partof-a-tree.’ As the first canes came from trees, and man in the making had already long ago descended, the name that Pithecanthropus gave his cane would logically have been stick. We have come back to that name after many departures. Staff, rod, bourdon (see Piers Plowman), —

walking-rod, cane, walking-stick, etc., each has served man, in the appreciative words of M. Cazal, to develop the graces of his youth, enhance the nobility of his mature years, and support the weakness of his senility. Attached as I am to my stick, it is often important that my stick should be attached to me. For such attachment the unknown shepherd who so long ago surprised his flock with an improved staff did more than he meant. With a proper crook to hang it over his arm, a man and his stick are one and inseparable.