During some recent travels I was suffering from a bad knee – nothing serious but just one of those things that happens when you keep on using your knees for decades and decades without any proper maintenance. But it made me even more unstable on my feet than I normally am, so I plucked a nice solid walking cane out of the umbrella stand by the front door and started using it to get around. Problem solved. The unanticipated results were astonishing. All my life I’ve seen people walking with sticks or canes, sometimes with crutches, and always felt a twinge of sympathy for their slowness, their awkwardness, and what I assumed to be their pain. But I never expected to carry a walking cane myself, just as you never expect to get white hair or special offers from the AARP. In the nineteenth century a stick was part of every gentleman’s attire, along with a hat. But that was a defensive measure against the blackguards and master criminals who infested the streets in those days, as anyone