The Tale of a Captain's Favorite Cane

Mr. L. Crawford sports a handsome, though unpretentious stick, which is a present from a deceased friend. Mr. Crawford was for many years a personal friend of the late Capt. W. Renton, the founder and principal owner of the Port Blakely Mill, and one of the best men on the coast. 'The last time I was in the captain's office before he died,' said Mr. Crawford, 'I mislaid my cane, and after I left I felt the loss, which took me there twice again to look for the stick. When finally Renton, who was blind, noticed that I was around, he wanted to know what was the matter. I told him I was looking for my cane. He replied: "Aren't you a pretty young man to be so dependent?" I told him that I had formed the habit of carrying a stick away back when I was a reporter in San Francisco and had to go home very late at night, that now the habit clung to me. "Well," said the captain, "I'll make you a present of a stick; I've got a lot of them which were given me by ship captains from all over the world, and I'll give you one of them." Shortly afterward Mr. Renton died, and I had entirely forgotten about the matter, when just before Christmas, John A. Campbell, his nephew and executor of his estate, asked me if he had ever sent me that stick he promised me. I told him no, and on Christmas, Mr. Campbell sent me the captain's own favorite cane. It is a tapering stick, without handle, made of a heavy hard wood resembling dark mahogany. It was presented to Capt. Renton by a ship captain, who obtained the wood from the South Sea Islands, and made the cane himself on shipboard.'