ercise, for a description of which the
reader is referred to Colonel Bowdler Bell's Manual.

CHAPTER IV.

SINGLE-STICK.

_Contributed by C. Phillipps-Wolley._

Single-stick is to the sabre what the foil is to the rapier, and while
foil-play is the science of using the point only, sabre-play is the
science of using a weapon, which has both point and edge, to the best
advantage. In almost every treatise upon fencing my subject has been
treated with scant ceremony. "Fencing" is assumed to mean the use of the
point only, or, perhaps it would not be too much to say, the use of the
foils; whereas fencing means simply (in English) the art of of-fending
another and de-fending yourself with _any weapons_, but perhaps
especially with all manner of swords.

In France or Spain, from which countries the use of the thrusting-sword
was introduced into England, it would be natural enough to consider
fencing as the science of using the point of the sword only, but here
the thrusting-sword is a comparatively modern importation, and is still
only a naturalized foreigner, whereas broad-sword and sabre and
single-stick play are older than, and were once as popular as, boxing.
On the other hand, the rapier was in old days a foreigner of peculiarly
shady reputation on these shores, its introducer being always alluded to
in the current literature of that day, with anathemas, as "that
desperate traitour, Rowland Yorke."

"L'Escrime" is, no doubt, the national sword-play of France, and, for
Frenchmen, fencing may mean the use of the foil, but broad-sword and
sabre-play are indigenous here, and if fencing is to mean only one kind
of sword-play or sword-exercise, it should mean single-stick.

Like the swordsmen of India, our gallant forefathers (according to
Fuller, in his "Worthies of England") accounted it unmanly to strike
below the knee or with the point. But necessity has no laws, still less
has it any sense of honour, so that before long English swordsmen
realized that the point was much more deadly than the edge, and that,
unless they were prepared to be "spitted like cats or rabbits," it was
necessary for them either to give up fighting or condescend to learn the
new fashion of fence.

As in boxing, it was found that the straight hit from the shoulder came
in quicker than the round-arm blow, so in fencing it was found that the
thrust got home sooner than the cut, and hence it came that the more
deadly style of fighting wi