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 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