_tespi_, whose original use is devotional, employed for the same purpose; indeed, Levantines, who are not Mohammedans, often regard these latter as special instruments of gaming and vice.[21] Carrying a walking-stick is another playful satisfaction in which the hand’s sensation of contact has a part, while the lead pencil, small as it is, will sometimes satisfy the demand for “something in the hand.” This is a genuine craving, which betrays itself in all sorts of awkward movements if we try to deny its indulgence. Carrying a cane is a remarkably widespread custom, and some think that the very small stone hatchets so common in ethnological museums as relics of a prehistoric time were used as cane handles in the stone age. Joest says, in the article cited above, that walking-sticks are used in millions of forms, on every continent and island of our earth. The naked Kaffir uses a slender, fragile cane of unusual length, and, according to P. Reichard,[22] his ideal of peace and prosperity is embodied in “going to walk with a cane,” since this implies freedom from the necessity of bearing arms. I close this digression with an instance which borders on the pathological. Sheridan was waiting for the celebrated Samuel Johnson, well known to be eccentric, to dine with him, and saw the doctor approaching from a distance, “walking along with a peculiar solemnity of deportment and an awkward sort of measured step. At that time the broad flagging at each side of the streets was not universally adopted, and stone posts were in use to prevent the annoying of carriages. Upon every post, as he passed along, I could observe he deliberately laid his hand, but, missing one of them, when he had got at some distance he seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and, immediately returning back, carefully performed the accustomed ceremony and resumed his former course, not omitting one till he gained the crossing. This, Mr. Sheridan assured me, however odd it might appear, was his constant practice.”[23]