Voices from the Past: The New Yorker (1951)

The following blurb came from the June 2, 1951 New Yorker magazine. Every issue they have a column of gossip called "Talk of the Town" and the following piece made me smile.

Secret Vice

A local family with a high regard for ancestral relics has been treasuring for seventy-five years of so a handsome gold-headed walking stick, originally the property of a respected forebear, a noted divine. According to family legend, this ancestor, forgoing lunch, always set out for a long walk every Sunday right after sermon, the stick tucked under his arm, his head bent in meditation. He would return in time for vespers, from the direction of the North River, beside whose placid waters, it was generally assumed, he had continued his self-communion. He left the cane to his only child, a daughter, and she left it to her only child, a daughter, and it was immobilized until last month, when the divine's great-grandson, upon receiving it from his mother as a sixteenth-birthday present, examined it carefully, unscrewed its head, and drew forth a small, sturdy fishing rod.

-- Dr. Todd