Walking stick

Hikers use walking sticks, also known as trekking poles, pilgrim's staffs, hiking poles, or hiking sticks, for a wide variety of purposes: as a support when going uphill or as a brake when going downhill; as a balance point when crossing streams, swamps, or other rough terrain; to feel for obstacles in the path; to test mud and water for depth; to enhance the cadence of striding, and as a defence against animals.

An alpenstock, from its origins in mountaineering in the Alps, is equipped with a steel point and may carry a hook or ice axe on top.

The fashion may have originated with Louis XIV, who favored a walking stick, possibly because he wore high heels.

[2] As a curator of the Detroit Institute of Arts wrote about elaborate walking sticks in their collection: There was almost no limit to the sums which people were then willing to spend upon them.

Benjamin Franklin had received as a gift a gold-headed walking stick from a French lady admirer when he was ambassador to France.

The idea of a fancy cane as a fashion accessory to go with top hat and tails has been popularized in many song-and-dance acts, especially by Fred Astaire in several of his films and songs such as Top Hat, White Tie and Tails and Puttin' On the Ritz, where he exhorts, "Come, let's mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks or umbrellas in their mitts."

In the U.S. Congress in 1856, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts criticized Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina for the Kansas–Nebraska Act.

When a relative of Andrew Butler, Preston Brooks, heard of it, he felt that Sumner's behavior demanded retaliation, and beat him senseless on the floor of the Senate with a gutta-percha walking cane.