THE INDICATOR. There he arriving round about doth flie, SPENSER No. XXXIII.-WEDNESDAY, MAY 24th, 1820. OF STICKS. AMONG other comparative injuries which we are accustomed to do to the characters of things animate and inanimate, in order to gratify our human vanity,-such as calling a rascal a dog (which is a great compliment), and saying that a tyrant makes a beast of himself (which it would be a very good thing, and a lift in the world, if he could), is a habit in which some persons indulge themselves, of calling insipid things and persons STICKS. Such and such a one is said to write a stick; and such another is himself called a stick a poor stick, a mere stick, a stick of a fellow. We protest against this injustice done to those genteel, jaunty, useful, and once flourishing sons of a good old stock. Take, for instance, a common cherry stick, which is one of the favourite sort. In the first place, it is a very pleasant substance to look at, the grain running round it in glossy and shadowy rings. Then it is of primæval antiquity, handed down from scion to scion through the most flourishing of genealogical trees. In the third place, it is of Eastern origin; of a stock, which it is possible may have furnished Haroun Al Raschid with a djereed, or Mahomet with a camel-stick, or Xenophon in his famous retreat with fences, or Xerxes with tent pins, or Alexander with a javelin, or Sardanapalus with tarts, or Solo mon with a simile for his mistress's lips, or Jacob with a crook, or Methusalem with shadow, or Zoroaster with mathematical Instru ments, or the builders of Babel with scaffolding. Lastly, how do you know but that you may have eaten cherries off this very stick; for it was once alive with sap, and rustling with foliage, and powdered with blossoms, and red and laughing with fruit. Where the leathern tassel now hangs, may have dangled a bunch of berries; and instead of the brass ferrel poking in the mud, the tip was growing into the air with it's youngest green, The use of sticks in general is of the very greatest antiquity. It is impossible to conceive a state of society, in which boughs should not be plucked from trees for some purpose of utility or amusement. Savages use clubs, hunters require lances, and shepherds their crooks. Then came the sceptre, which is originally nothing but a staff, or a lance, or a crook, distinguished from others. The Greek word for sceptre signifies also a walking-stick. A mace, however plumped up and disguised with gilding and a heavy crown, is only the same thing in the hands of an inferior ruler; and so are all other sticks used in office, from the baton of the Grand Constable of France down to the tipstaff of a constable in Bow-street. As the shepherd's dog is the origin of the gentlest whelp that lies on a hearth-cushion, and of the most pompous barker that jumps about a pair of greys, so the merest stick used by a modern Arcadian, when he is driving his flock to Leadenhall-market with a piece of candle in his hat and No. 554 on his arm, is the first great parent and original of all authoritative staves, from the beadle's cane wherewith he terrifies charity-boys who eat bull's-eyes in church-time, up to the silver mace of the verger; the wands of parishes and governors; the tasselled staff, wherewith the Band-Major so loftily picks out his measured way before the musicians, and which he holds up when they are to cease; the White Staff of the Lord Treasurer; the court-officer emphatically called the Lord Gold Stick; the Bishop's Crozier (Pedum Episcopale) whereby he is supposed to pull back the feet of his straying flock; and the royal and imperial sceptre aforesaid, whose holders, formerly called Shepherds of the People (Hoves Aawv) were seditiously said to fleece more than to protect. The Vaulting-Staff, a luxurious instrument of exercise, must have been used in times immemorial for passing streams and rough ground with. It is the ancestor of the staff with which Pilgrims. travelled. The Staff and Quarter-Staff of the country Robin Hoods is a remnant of the war-club. So is the Irish Shilelah, which a friend has well defined to be a stick with two butt-ends." The originals of all these, that are not extant in our own country, may still be seen wherever there are nations uncivilized. The Negro Prince, who asked our countrymen what was said of him in Europe, was surrounded in state with a parcel of ragged fellows with shilelahs over their shoulders, Lord Old Sticks. But sticks have been great favourites with civilized as well as uncivilized nations; only the former have used them more for help and ornament. The Greeks were a sceptropherous people. Homer pro-bably used a walking-stick, because he was blind; but we have it on authority that Socrates did. On his first meeting with Xenophon, which was in a narrow passage, he barred up the way with his stick, and asked him in his good-natured manner, where provisions were to be had. Xenophon having told him, he asked again, if he knew where virtue and wisdom were to be had; and this reducing the young man to a non-plus, he said, "Follow me, and learn ;" which Xenophon did, and became the great man we have all heard of. The fatherly story of Agesilaus, who was caught amusing his little boy with riding on a stick, and asked his visitor whether he was a father, is too well known for repetition.. There is an illustrious anecdote connected with our subject in Roman history. The highest compliment, which his countrymen thought they could pay to the first Scipio was to call him a walking-stick; for such is the signification of his name. It was given him for the filial zeal with which he used to help his old father about, serving his decrepid age instead of a staff. But the Romans were not remarkable for sentiment. What we hear in general of their sticks, is the thumpings which servants get in their plays; and above all, the famous rods which the lictors carried, and which being actual sticks, must have inflicted horrible dull bruises and malignant stripes. They were pretty things, it must be confessed, to carry before the chief magistrate; just as if the King or the Lord Chancellor were to be preceded by a cat-o'-nine-tails. Sticks are not at all in such request with modern times as they were. Formerly, we suspect, most of the poorer ranks in England used to carry them, both on account of the prevalence of manly sports, and for security in travelling: for before the invention of posts and mailcoaches, a trip to Marlowe or St. Albans was a thing to make a man write his will. As they came to be ornamented, fashion adopted them. The Cavaliers of Charles the First's time were a sticked race, as well as the apostolic divines and puritans, who appear to have carried staves because they read of them among the patriarchs. Charles the First, when at his trial, held out his stick to forbid the Attorney-General's proceeding. There is an interesting little story connected with a stick, which is related of Andrew Marvell's father, (worthy of such a son), and which as it is little known, we will repeat; though it respects the man more than the machine. He had been visited by a young lady, who in spite of a stormy evening persisted in returning across the Humber, because her family would be alarmed at her absence. The old gentleman, high-hearted and chearful, after vainly trying to dissuade her from perils which he understood better than she, resolved in his gallantry to bear her company. He accordingly walked with her down to the shore, and getting into the boat, threw his stick to a friend, with a request, in a lively tone of voice, that he would preserve it for a keepsake. He then cried out merrily" Ho-hoy for Heaven!" and put off with his visitor. They were drowned. As commerce increased, exotic sticks grew in request from the Indies. Hence the Bamboo, the Whanghee, the Jambee which makes such a genteel figure under Mr. Lilly's auspices in the Tatler; and our light modern cane, which the Sunday stroller buys at sixpence a piece, with a twist of it at the end for a handle. The physicians, till within the last few score of years, retained among other fopperies which they converted into gravities, the wig and gold-headed cane. The latter had been an indispensible sign royal of fashion, and was turned to infinite purposes of accomplished gesticulation. One of the most courtly personages in the Rape of the Lock is Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain, Sir Richard Steele, as we have before noticed, is reproached by a busybody of those times for a habit of jerking his stick against the pavement he walked. When swords were abolished by Act of Parliament, the tavern-boys took to pinking each other, 'as injuriously as they could well manage, with their walking-sticks. Macklin the player was tried for his life for poking a man's eye out in this way. Perhaps this helped to bring the stick into disrepute, for the use of it seems to have declined more and more, till it is now confined to old men, and a few among the younger. It is unsuitable to our moneygetting mode of rushing hither and thither. Instead of pinking a man's ribs or so, or thrusting out his eye from an excess of the jovial, we break his heart with a bankruptcy. Canes became so common before the decline of the use of sticks, that whenever a man is beaten with a stick, let it be of what sort it may, it is still common to say that he has had "a caning." Which reminds us of an anecdote more agreeable than surprising; though the patient doubtless thought the reverse. A gentleman, who was remarkable for the amenity of his manners, accompanied by something which a bully might certainly think he might presume upon, found himself compelled to address a person who did not know how to "translate his style," in the following words, which were all delivered in the sweetest tone in the world, with an air of almost hushing gentility:-"Sir, I am extremely sorry-to be obliged to say,―that you appear to have a very erroneous notion of the manners that become your situation in life;-and I am compelled, with great reluctance, to add," (here he became still softer and more delicate)" that if you do not think fit, upon reflection, to alter this very extraordinary conduct towards a gentleman, I shall be under the necessity of caning you." The other treated the thing as a joke; and to the delight of the bye-standers, received a very grave drubbing. There are two eminent threats connected with caning, in the history of Dr. Johnson. One was from himself, when he was told that Foote intended to mimic him on the stage. He replied, that if "the dog" ventured to play his tricks with him, he would step out of the stagebox, chastise him before the audience, and then throw himself upon their candour and common sympathy. Foote desisted, as he had good reason to do. The Doctor would have read him a stout lesson, and then made a speech to the audience as forcible; so that the theatrical annals have to regret, that the subject and Foote's shoulders were not afforded him to expatiate upon. It would have been a fine involuntary piece of acting,-the part of Scipio by Dr. Johnson, The other threat was against the Doctor himself from Macpherson, the compounder of Ossian. It was for denying the authenticity of that work; a provocation the more annoying, inasmuch as he did not seem duly sensible of it's merits. Johnson replied to Macpherson's letter by one of contemptuous brevity and pith; and contented himself with carrying about a large stick, with which he intended to repel Macpherson 1 in case of an assault. Had they met, it would have been like "two clouds over the Caspian;" for both were large-built men. We recollect another bacular Johnsonian anecdote. When he was travelling in Scotland, he lost a huge stick of his in the little tree-less island of Mull. Boswell told him he would recover it; but the Doctor shook his head. "No, no," said he; "let any body in Mull get possession of it, and it will never be restored. Consider, Sir, the value of such a piece of timber here." The most venerable sticks now surviving, are the smooth ambercoloured canes in the possession of old ladies. They have sometimes a gold-head, but oftener a crook of ivory. But they have latterly been much displaced by light umbrellas, the handles of which are imitations of them; and these are gradually retreating before the young parasol, especially about town. The old ladies take the wings of the stage-coaches, and are run away with by John Pullen in a style of infinite convenience. The other sticks in use are for the most part of cherry, oak, and crab, and seldom adorned with more than a leathern tassel: often with nothing. Bamboo and other canes do not abound as might be expected from our intercourse with India: but commerce, in this as in other respects, has overshot it's mark. People cannot afford to use sticks, any more than bees could in their hives. Of the common sabbatical cane we have already spoken. There is a very sufficing little manual, equally light and lissom, yçlept an ebony switch; but we have not seen it often. That sticks however are not to be despised by the leisurely, any one who has known what it is to want words, or to slice off the head of a thistle, will allow. The utility of the stick seems divisible into three heads; first, to give a general consciousness of power; second, which may be called a part of the first, to help the demeanour; and third, which may be called a part of the second, to assist a man over the gaps of speech, the little aukward intervals, called want of ideas. Deprive a man of his stick, who is accustomed to carry one, and with what a diminished sense of vigour and gracefulness he issues out of his house! Wanting his stick, he wants himself. His self-possession, like Acres's on the duel-ground, has gone out of his fingers' ends. But restore it him, and how he resumes his energy! If a common walking-stick, he cherishes the top of it with his fingers, putting them out and back again with a fresh desire to feel it in his palm! How he strikes it against the ground, and feels power come back to his arm! How he makes the pavement ring with the ferrel, if in a street; or decapitates the downy thistles aforesaid, if in a field! Then if it be a switch, how firmly he jerks his step at the first infliction of it on the air! How he quivers the point of it as he goes, holding the handle with a strait-dropped arm and a tight grasp! How his foot keeps time to the switches! How the passengers think he is going to ride, whether he is or not! How he twigs the luckless pieces of lilac or other shrubs, that peep out of a garden railing! And if a sneaking-looking dog is coming by, how he longs to exercise his despotism and his moral sense at once, by giving him an invigorating twinge! |