Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 172, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1913 — CANE IS NOW PROPER THING [ARTICLE]

CANE IS NOW PROPER THING

Women Carry Walking Sticks In Fifth Avenue and Central Park, JMew York.

New York. —The women are carrying canes again. The idea is quite in keeping with waistcoats and slashed skirts.

Sometimes a new fad takes a peep at fashiondom; a few alert ones catch at it and appropriate it for a short time. - Especially are Americans slow to take up new and faddish ideas. But on its second appearance it goes like hot cakes. Do you remember the “swagger sticks,” as the English army officers call them, that a few women carried two or three years ago? The ones carried now are larger, some of them, and every excuse under the sun is given for carrying them. In London, Paris and Rome the most fashionable < women, old and young, are carrying them, so that they are quite as usual as a parasol would be here.

The new canes are about a foot longer than the gentleman's cane; that is, about 48 inches. They are much lighter in weight and come in two varieties, one with a small knob and the other with the curved handle. Ebony is perhaps the smartest wood used, with pimento or Malacca a close second. London is quite mad over the partridge wood, although this is distinctly a rougher cross country walking stick. The color is mottled, about the same as the partridge bird; and there are distinct ridges, every two inches which the lines of the feathers. With a rough tweed suit this looks better than the smoother woods do. One of the most delicate, on the other hand, is the throstle wood, a pastel greenish blue, which is dainty enough to be carried with the new silk suits.

Although not a few of the canes have appeared on the avenue, one of the large umbrella houses is selling a dozen a week to the members of the ultraexclusive set. Perhaps the best place to see them is in Central Park in the early morning. This morning or beauty walk has become quite a fad among the debutantes of upper Fifth avenue. 1