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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #60356 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60356)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Wheel Within a Wheel, by Frances E. Willard
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll
-have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
-this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: A Wheel Within a Wheel
- How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle
-
-Author: Frances E. Willard
-
-Release Date: September 25, 2019 [EBook #60356]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Wilson and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-A WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: _Frances E Willard_]
-
-
-
-
- A WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL
-
- HOW I LEARNED TO
- RIDE THE BICYCLE
-
- _WITH SOME REFLECTIONS BY THE WAY_
-
-
- BY
- FRANCES E. WILLARD
-
-
- Illustrated
-
- [Decoration: Wheel]
-
- FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
- New York Chicago Toronto
- 1895
-
-
-
-
- Copyright, 1895,
- By Fleming H. Revell Company.
-
-
-
-
- GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
- TO
-
- LADY HENRY SOMERSET,
-
- WHO GAVE ME “GLADYS,”
- THAT HARBINGER OF HEALTH AND HAPPINESS.
-
-
-
-
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
-
- PAGE
- Miss Willard _Frontispiece_
-
- A Lack of Balance _facing page_ 21
-
- Eastnor Castle 29
-
- “So Easy—When You Know How” 36
-
- “It’s Dogged as Does It” 44
-
- “Let Go—but Stand By” 57
-
- “At Last” 72
-
-
-
-
-A WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL
-
-
-PRELIMINARY
-
-From my earliest recollections, and up to the ripe age of fifty-three,
-I had been an active and diligent worker in the world. This sounds
-absurd; but having almost no toys except such as I could manufacture,
-my first plays were but the outdoor work of active men and women on a
-small scale. Born with an inveterate opposition to staying in the
-house, I very early learned to use a carpenter’s kit and a gardener’s
-tools, and followed in my mimic way the occupations of the poulterer
-and the farmer, working my little field with a wooden plow of my own
-making, and felling saplings with an ax rigged up from the old iron
-of the wagon-shop. Living in the country, far from the artificial
-restraints and conventions by which most girls are hedged from the
-activities that would develop a good physique, and endowed with the
-companionship of a mother who let me have my own sweet will, I “ran
-wild” until my sixteenth birthday, when the hampering long skirts were
-brought, with their accompanying corset and high heels; my hair was
-clubbed up with pins, and I remember writing in my journal, in the
-first heartbreak of a young human colt taken from its pleasant
-pasture, “Altogether, I recognize that my occupation is gone.”
-
-From that time on I always realized and was obedient to the
-limitations thus imposed, though in my heart of hearts I felt their
-unwisdom even more than their injustice. My work then changed from my
-beloved and breezy outdoor world to the indoor realm of study,
-teaching, writing, speaking, and went on almost without a break or
-pain until my fifty-third year, when the loss of my mother
-accentuated the strain of this long period in which mental and
-physical life were out of balance, and I fell into a mild form of what
-is called nerve-wear by the patient and nervous prostration by the
-lookers-on. Thus ruthlessly thrown out of the usual lines of reaction
-on my environment, and sighing for new worlds to conquer, I determined
-that I would learn the bicycle.
-
-An English naval officer had said to me, after learning it himself,
-“You women have no idea of the new realm of happiness which the
-bicycle has opened to us men.” Already I knew well enough that tens of
-thousands who could never afford to own, feed, and stable a horse, had
-by this bright invention enjoyed the swiftness of motion which is
-perhaps the most fascinating feature of material life, the charm of a
-wide outlook upon the natural world, and that sense of mastery which
-is probably the greatest attraction in horseback-riding. But the steed
-that never tires, and is “mettlesome” in the fullest sense of the
-word, is full of tricks and capers, and to hold his head steady and
-make him prance to suit you is no small accomplishment. I had often
-mentioned in my temperance writings that the bicycle was perhaps our
-strongest ally in winning young men away from public-houses, because
-it afforded them a pleasure far more enduring, and an exhilaration as
-much more delightful as the natural is than the unnatural. From my
-observation of my own brother and hundreds of young men who have been
-my pupils, I have always held that a boy’s heart is not set in him to
-do evil any more than a girl’s, and that the reason our young men fall
-into evil ways is largely because we have not had the wit and wisdom
-to provide them with amusements suited to their joyous youth, by means
-of which they could invest their superabundant animal spirits in ways
-that should harm no one and help themselves to the best development
-and the cleanliest ways of living. So as a temperance reformer I
-always felt a strong attraction toward the bicycle, because it is the
-vehicle of so much harmless pleasure, and because the skill required
-in handling it obliges those who mount to keep clear heads and steady
-hands. Nor could I see a reason in the world why a woman should not
-ride the silent steed so swift and blithesome. I knew perfectly well
-that when, some ten or fifteen years ago, Miss Bertha von Hillern, a
-young German artist in America, took it into her head to give
-exhibitions of her skill in riding the bicycle she was thought by some
-to be a sort of semi-monster; and liberal as our people are in their
-views of what a woman may undertake, I should certainly have felt
-compromised, at that remote and benighted period, by going to see her
-ride, not because there was any harm in it, but solely because of what
-we call in homely phrase “the speech of people.” But behold! it was
-long ago conceded that women might ride the tricycle—indeed, one had
-been presented to me by my friend Colonel Pope, of Boston, a famous
-manufacturer of these swift roadsters, as far back as 1886; and I had
-swung around the garden-paths upon its saddle a few minutes every
-evening when work was over at my Rest Cottage home. I had even hoped
-to give an impetus among conservative women to this new line of
-physical development and outdoor happiness; but that is quite another
-story and will come in later. Suffice it for the present that it did
-me good, as it doth the upright in heart, to notice recently that the
-Princesses Louise and Beatrice both ride the tricycle at Balmoral; for
-I know that with the great mass of feminine humanity this precedent
-will have exceeding weight—and where the tricycle prophesies the
-bicycle shall ere long preach the gospel of outdoors.
-
-For we are all unconsciously the slaves of public opinion. When the
-hansom first came on London streets no woman having regard to her
-social state and standing would have dreamed of entering one of these
-pavement gondolas unless accompanied by a gentleman as her escort.
-But in course of time a few women, of stronger individuality than the
-average, ventured to go unattended; later on, use wore off the glamour
-of the traditions which said that women must not go alone, and now
-none but an imbecile would hold herself to any such observance.
-
-A trip around the world by a young woman would have been regarded a
-quarter of a century ago as equivalent to social outlawry; but now
-young women of the highest character and talent are employed by
-leading journals to whip around the world “on time,” and one has done
-so in seventy-three, another in seventy-four days, while the young
-women recently sent out by an Edinburgh newspaper will no doubt
-considerably contract these figures.
-
-As I have mentioned, Fräulein von Hillern is the first woman, so far
-as I know, who ever rode a bicycle, and for this she was considered to
-be one of those persons who classified nowhere, and who could not do
-so except to the injury of the feminine guild with which they were
-connected before they “stepped out”; but now, in France, for a woman
-to ride a bicycle is not only “good form,” but the current craze among
-the aristocracy.
-
-Since Balaam’s beast there has been but little authentic talking done
-by the four-footed; but that is no reason why the two-wheeled should
-not speak its mind, and the first utterance I have to chronicle in the
-softly flowing vocables of my bicycle is to the following purport. I
-heard it as we trundled off down the Priory incline at the suburban
-home of Lady Henry Somerset, Reigate, England; it said: “Behold, I do
-not fail you; I am not a skittish beastie, but a sober, well-conducted
-roadster. I did not ask you to mount or drive, but since you have done
-so you must now learn the laws of balance and exploitation. I did not
-invent these laws, but I have been built conformably to them, and you
-must suit yourself to the unchanging regulations of gravity, general
-and specific, as illustrated in me. Strange as the paradox may seem,
-you will do this best by not trying to do it at all. You must make up
-what you are pleased to call your mind—make it up speedily, or you
-will be cast in yonder mud-puddle, and no blame to me and no thanks to
-yourself. Two things must occupy your thinking powers to the exclusion
-of every other thing: first, the goal; and, second, the momentum
-requisite to reach it. Do not look down like an imbecile upon the
-steering-wheel in front of you—that would be about as wise as for a
-nauseated voyager to keep his optical instruments fixed upon the
-rolling waves. It is the curse of life that nearly every one looks
-down. But the microscope will never set you free; you must glue your
-eyes to the telescope for ever and a day. Look up and off and on and
-out; get forehead and foot into line, the latter acting as a rhythmic
-spur in the flanks of your equilibriated equine; so shall you win, and
-that right speedily.
-
-“It was divinely said that the kingdom of God is within you. Some
-make a mysticism of this declaration, but it is hard common sense; for
-the lesson you will learn from me is this: every kingdom over which we
-reign must be first formed within us on what the psychic people call
-the ‘astral plane,’ but what I as a bicycle look upon as the common
-parade-ground of individual thought.”
-
-
-THE PROCESS
-
-Courtiers wittily say that horseback riding is the only thing in which
-a prince is apt to excel, for the reason that the horse never flatters
-and would as soon throw him as if he were a groom. Therefore it is
-only by actually mastering the art of riding that a prince can hold
-his place with the noblest of the four-footed animals.
-
-Happily there is now another locomotive contrivance which is no
-flatterer, and which peasant and prince must master, if they do this
-at all, by the democratic route of honest hard work. Well will it be
-for rulers when the tough old Yorkshire proverb applies to them as
-strictly as to the lowest of their subjects: “_It’s dogged as does
-it._” We all know the old saying, “Fire is a good servant, but a bad
-master.” This is equally true of the bicycle: if you give it an
-inch—nay, a hair—it will take an ell—nay, an evolution—and you a
-contusion, or, like enough, a perforated kneecap.
-
-Not a single friend encouraged me to learn the bicycle except an
-active-minded young school-teacher, Miss Luther, of my hometown,
-Evanston, who came several times with her wheel and gave me lessons. I
-also took a few lessons in a stuffy, semi-subterranean gallery in
-Chicago. But at fifty-three I was at more disadvantage than most
-people, for not only had I the impedimenta that result from the
-unnatural style of dress, but I also suffered from the sedentary
-habits of a lifetime. And then that small world (which is our real
-one) of those who loved me best, and who considered themselves
-largely responsible for my every-day methods of life, did not
-encourage me, but in their affectionate solicitude—and with abundant
-reason—thought I should “break my bones” and “spoil my future.” It
-must be said, however, to their everlasting praise, that they opposed
-no objection when they saw that my will was firmly set to do this
-thing; on the contrary, they put me in the way of carrying out my
-purpose, and lent to my laborious lessons the light of their
-countenances reconciled. Actions speak so much louder than words that
-I here set before you what may be called a feminine bicycler’s first
-position—at least it was mine.
-
-Given a safety-bicycle—pneumatic tires and all the rest of it which
-renders the pneumatic safety the only safe Bucephalus—the gearing
-carefully wired in so that we shall not be entangled. “Woe is me!” was
-my first exclamation, naturally enough interpreted by my outriders
-“Whoa is me,” and they “whoaed”—indeed, we did little else but “check
-up.”
-
- [Illustration: A LACK OF BALANCE.]
-
-(Just here let me interpolate: Learn on a low machine, but “fly high”
-when once you have mastered it, as you have much more power over the
-wheels and can get up better speed with a less expenditure of force
-when you are above the instrument than when you are at the back of it.
-And remember this is as true of the world as of the wheel.)
-
-The order of evolution was something like this: First, three young
-Englishmen, all strong-armed and accomplished bicyclers, held the
-machine in place while I climbed timidly into the saddle. Second, two
-well-disposed young women put in all the power they had, until they
-grew red in the face, offsetting each other’s pressure on the
-cross-bar and thus maintaining the equipoise to which I was unequal.
-Third, one walked beside me, steadying the ark as best she could by
-holding the center of the deadly cross-bar, to let go whose handles
-meant chaos and collapse. After this I was able to hold my own if I
-had the moral support of my kind trainers, and it passed into a
-proverb among them, the short emphatic word of command I gave them at
-every few turns of the wheel: “Let go, but stand by.” Still later
-everything was learned—how to sit, how to pedal, how to turn, how to
-dismount; but alas! how to vault into the saddle I found not; that was
-the coveted power that lingered long and would not yield itself.
-
-That which caused the many failures I had in learning the bicycle had
-caused me failures in life; namely, a certain fearful looking for of
-judgment; a too vivid realization of the uncertainty of everything
-about me; an underlying doubt—at once, however (and this is all that
-saved me), matched and overcome by the determination not to give in to
-it.
-
-The best gains that we make come to us after an interval of rest which
-follows strenuous endeavor. Having, as I hoped, mastered the
-rudiments of bicycling, I went away to Germany and for a fortnight did
-not even see the winsome wheel. Returning, I had the horse brought
-round, and mounted with no little trepidation, being assisted by one
-of my faithful guides; but behold! I found that in advancing, turning,
-and descending I was much more at home than when I had last exercised
-that new intelligence in the muscles which had been the result of
-repetitions resolutely attempted and practised long.
-
-Another thing I found is that we carry in the mind a picture of the
-road; and if it is humpy by reason of pebbles, even if we steer clear
-of them, we can by no means skim along as happily as when its
-smoothness facilitates the pleasing impression on the retina; indeed,
-the whole science and practice of the bicycle is “in your eye” and in
-your will; the rest is mere manipulation.
-
-As I have said, in many curious particulars the bicycle is like the
-world. When it had thrown me painfully once (which was the extent of
-my downfalls during the entire process of learning, and did not
-prevent me from resuming my place on the back of the treacherous
-creature a few minutes afterward), and more especially when it threw
-one of my dearest friends, hurting her knee so that it was painful for
-a month, then for a time Gladys had gladsome ways for me no longer,
-but seemed the embodiment of misfortune and dread. Even so the world
-has often seemed in hours of darkness and despondency; its iron
-mechanism, its pitiless grind, its swift, silent, on-rolling gait have
-oppressed to pathos, if not to melancholy. Good health and plenty of
-oxygenated air have promptly restored the equilibrium. But how many a
-fine spirit, to finest issues touched, has been worn and shredded by
-the world’s mill until in desperation it flung itself away. We can
-easily carp at those who quit the crowded race-course without so much
-as saying “By your leave”; but “let him that thinketh he standeth
-take heed lest he fall.” We owe it to nature, to nurture, to our
-environments, and, most of all, to our faith in God, that we, too, do
-not cry, like so many gentle hearts less brave and sturdy, “Anywhere,
-anywhere, out of the world.”
-
-Gradually, item by item, I learned the location of every screw and
-spring, spoke and tire, and every beam and bearing that went to make
-up Gladys. This was not the lesson of a day, but of many days and
-weeks, and it had to be learned before we could get on well together.
-To my mind the infelicities of which we see so much in life grow out
-of lack of time and patience thus to study and adjust the natures that
-have agreed in the sight of God and man to stand by one another to the
-last. They will not take the pains, they have not enough specific
-gravity, to balance themselves in their new environment. Indeed, I
-found a whole philosophy of life in the wooing and the winning of my
-bicycle.
-
-Just as a strong and skilful swimmer takes the waves, so the bicycler
-must learn to take such waves of mental impression as the passing of a
-gigantic hay-wagon, the sudden obtrusion of black cattle with
-wide-branching horns, the rattling pace of high-stepping steeds, or
-even the swift transit of a railway-train. At first she will be upset
-by the apparition of the smallest poodle, and not until she has
-attained a wide experience will she hold herself steady in presence of
-the critical eyes of a coach-and-four. But all this is a part of that
-equilibration of thought and action by which we conquer the universe
-in conquering ourselves.
-
-I finally concluded that all failure was from a wobbling will rather
-than a wobbling wheel. I felt that indeed the will is the wheel of the
-mind—its perpetual motion having been learned when the morning stars
-sang together. When the wheel of the mind went well then the rubber
-wheel hummed merrily; but specters of the mind there are as well as of
-the wheel. In the aggregate of perception concerning which we have
-reflected and from which we have deduced our generalizations upon the
-world without, within, above, there are so many ghastly and
-fantastical images that they must obtrude themselves at certain
-intervals, like filmy bits of glass in the turn of the kaleidoscope.
-Probably every accident of which I had heard or read in my
-half-century tinged the uncertainty that by the correlation of forces
-passed over into the tremor that I felt when we began to round the
-terminus bend of the broad Priory walk. And who shall say by what
-original energy the mind forced itself at once from the contemplation
-of disaster and thrust into the very movement of the foot on the pedal
-a concept of vigor, safety, and success? I began to feel that myself
-plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world, upon whose
-spinning-wheel we must all learn to ride, or fall into the sluiceways
-of oblivion and despair. That which made me succeed with the bicycle
-was precisely what had gained me a measure of success in life—it was
-the hardihood of spirit that led me to begin, the persistence of will
-that held me to my task, and the patience that was willing to begin
-again when the last stroke had failed. And so I found high moral uses
-in the bicycle and can commend it as a teacher without pulpit or
-creed. He who succeeds, or, to be more exact in handing over my
-experience, she who succeeds in gaining the mastery of such an animal
-as Gladys, will gain the mastery of life, and by exactly the same
-methods and characteristics.
-
-One of the first things I learned was that unless a forward impetus
-were given within well-defined intervals, away we went into the
-gutter, rider and steed. And I said to myself: “It is the same with
-all reforms: sometimes they seem to lag, then they barely balance,
-then they begin to oscillate as if they would lose the track and
-tumble to one side; but all they need is a new impetus at the right
-moment on the right angle, and away they go again as merrily as if
-they had never threatened to stop at all.”
-
- [Illustration: EASTNOR CASTLE.]
-
-On the Castle terrace we went through a long, narrow curve in a turret
-to seek a broader esplanade. As we approached it I felt wrought up in
-my mind, a little uncertain in my motions; and for that reason, on a
-small scale, my quick imagination put before me pictures of a
-“standing from under” on the part of the machine and damaging bruises
-against the pitiless walls. But with a little unobtrusive guiding by
-one who knew better than I how to do it we soon came out of the dim
-passage on to the broad, bright terrace we sought, and in an instant
-my fears were as much left behind as if I had not had them. So it will
-be, I think, I hope—nay, I believe—when, children that we are, we
-tremble on the brink and fear to launch away; but we shall find that
-death is only a bend in the river of life that sets the current
-heavenward.
-
-One afternoon, on the terrace at Eastnor Castle—the most delightful
-bicycle gallery I have found anywhere—I fell to talking with a young
-companion about New-Year resolutions. It was just before Christmas,
-but the sky was of that moist blue that England only knows, and the
-earth almost steamy in the mild sunshine, while the soft outline of
-the famous Malvern Hills was restful as the little lake just at our
-feet, where swans were sailing or anchoring according to their fancy.
-
-One of us said: “I have already chosen my motto for 1894, and it is
-this, from a teacher who so often said to her pupils, when meeting
-them in corridor or recitation-room, ‘I have heard something nice
-about you,’ that it passed into a proverb in the school. Now I have
-determined that my mental attitude toward everybody shall be the same
-that these words indicate. The meaning is identical with that of the
-inscription on the fireplace in my den at home—‘Let something good be
-said.’ I remember mentioning to a literary friend that this was what I
-had chosen, and so far was he from perceiving my intention that he
-sarcastically remarked, ‘Are you then afraid that people will say dull
-things unless you set this rule before them?’ But my thought then was
-as it is now, that we should apply in our discussions of people and
-things the rule laid down by Coleridge, namely, ‘Look for the good in
-everything that you behold and every person, but do not decline to see
-the defects if they are there, and to refer to them.’”
-
-“That is an excellent motto,” brightly replied the other, “but if we
-followed it life would not be nearly so amusing as it is now. I have
-several friends whose rule is never to say any harm of anybody, and to
-my mind this cripples their development, for the tendency of such a
-method is to dull one’s powers of discrimination.”
-
-“But,” said the first speaker, “would not a medium course be
-better?—such a one, for instance, as my motto suggests. This would not
-involve keeping silence about the faults of persons and things, but
-would develop that cheerful atmosphere which helps to smooth the
-rough edges of life, and at the same time does not destroy the
-critical faculty, because you are to tell the truth and the whole
-truth concerning those around you, whereas the common custom is to
-speak much of defects and little or not at all of merits.”
-
-“Yes,” was the reply, “but it is not half so entertaining to speak of
-virtues as of faults, especially in this country; if you don’t
-criticize you can hardly talk at all, because the English dwell a
-great deal on what we in America call ‘the selvage side’ of things.”
-
-“Have you, then, noticed this as a national peculiarity after ten
-years of observation?”
-
-“Yes; and I have often heard it remarked, not only by our own
-countrymen, but by the people here.”
-
-“What do you think explains it?”
-
-“Well, I am inclined to apply the theory of M. Taine, the great French
-critic, to most of the circumstances of life, and I should say it was
-the climate; its uncertainty, its constant changes, the heaviness of
-the atmosphere, the amount of fog, the real stress and strain to live
-that results from trying physical conditions added to the razor-sharp
-edge of business and social competition and the close contact that
-comes of packing forty millions of people of pronounced individuality
-on an island no bigger than the State of Georgia. To my mind the
-wonder is that they behave so well!”
-
-Once, when I grew somewhat discouraged and said that I had made no
-progress for a day or two, my teacher told me that it was just so when
-she learned: there were growing days and stationary days, and she had
-always noticed that just after one of these last dull, depressing, and
-dubious intervals she seemed to get an uplift and went ahead better
-than ever. It was like a spurt in rowing. This seems to be the law of
-progress in everything we do; it moves along a spiral rather than a
-perpendicular; we seem to be actually going out of the way, and yet
-it turns out that we were really moving upward all the time.
-
-One day, when my most expert trainer twisted the truth a little that
-she might encourage me, I was reminded of an anecdote.
-
-In this practical age an illustration of the workings of truthfulness
-will often help a child more than any amount of exhortation concerning
-the theory thereof. For instance, a father in that level-headed part
-of the United States known as “out West” found that his little boy was
-falling into the habit of telling what was not true; so he said to him
-at the lunch-table, “Johnnie, I will come around with a horse and
-carriage at four o’clock to take you and mama for a drive this
-afternoon.” The boy was in high spirits, and watched for his father at
-the gate; but the hours passed by until six o’clock, when that worthy
-appeared walking up the street in the most unconcerned manner; and
-when Johnnie, full of indignation and astonishment, asked him why he
-did not come as he had promised, the father said, “Oh, my boy, I just
-took it into my head that I would tell you a lie about the matter,
-just as you have begun telling lies to me.” The boy began to cry with
-mingled disappointment and shame to think his father would do a thing
-like that; whereupon the father took the little fellow on his knee and
-said: “This has all been done to show you what mischief comes from
-telling what is not true. It spoils everybody’s good time. If you
-cannot believe what I say and I cannot believe what you say, and
-nobody can believe what anybody says, then the world cannot go on at
-all; it would have to stop as the old eight-day clock did the other
-day, making us all late to dinner. It is only because, as a rule, we
-can believe in one another’s word that we are able to have homes, do
-business, and enjoy life. Whoever goes straight on telling the truth
-helps more by that than he could in any other one way to build up the
-world into a beautiful and happy place; and every time anybody tells
-what is not true he helps to weaken everybody’s confidence in
-everybody else, and to spoil the good time, not of himself alone, but
-of all those about him.”
-
-
-MY TEACHERS
-
-I studied my various kind teachers with much care. One was so helpful
-that but for my protest she would fairly have carried me in her arms,
-and the bicycle to boot, the whole distance. This was because she had
-not a scintilla of knowledge concerning the machine, and she did not
-wish me to come to grief through any lack on her part.
-
-Another was too timorous; the very twitter of her face, swiftly
-communicated to her arm and imparted to the quaking cross-bar,
-convulsed me with an inward fear; therefore, for her sake and mine, I
-speedily counted her out from the faculty in my bicycle college.
-
- [Illustration: “SO EASY—WHEN YOU KNOW HOW.”]
-
-Another (and she, like most of my teachers, was a Londoner) was
-herself so capable, not to say adventurous, and withal so solicitous
-for my best good, that she elicited my admiration by her ingenious
-mixture of cheering me on and holding me back; the latter, however,
-predominated, for she never relinquished her strong grasp on the
-cross-bar. She was a fine, brave character, somewhat inclined to a
-pessimistic view of life because of severe experience at home, which,
-coming to her at a pitifully early period, when brain and fancy were
-most impressionable, wrought an injustice to a nature large and
-generous—one which under happier skies would have blossomed out into a
-perfect flower of womanhood. My offhand thinkings aloud, to which I
-have always been greatly given, especially when in genial company, she
-seemed to “catch on the fly,” as a reporter impales an idea on his
-pencil-point. We had no end of what we thought to be good talk of
-things in heaven and earth and the waters under the earth; of the
-mystery that lies so closely round this cradle of a world, and all
-the varied and ingenious ways of which the bicycle, so slow to give
-up its secret to a care-worn and inelastic pupil half a century old,
-was just then our whimsical and favorite symbol.
-
-We rejoiced together greatly in perceiving the impetus that this
-uncompromising but fascinating and inimitably capable machine would
-give to that blessed “woman question” to which we were both devoted;
-for we had earned our own bread many a year, and she, although more
-than twenty years my junior, had accumulated an amount of experience
-well-nigh as great, because she had lived in the world’s heart, or the
-world’s carbuncle (just as one chooses to regard what has been called
-in literary phrase the capital of humanity). We saw that the physical
-development of humanity’s mother-half would be wonderfully advanced by
-that universal introduction of the bicycle sure to come about within
-the next few years, because it is for the interest of great
-commercial monopolies that this should be so, since if women
-patronize the wheel the number of buyers will be twice as large. If
-women ride they must, when riding, dress more rationally than they
-have been wont to do. If they do this many prejudices as to what they
-may be allowed to wear will melt away. Reason will gain upon
-precedent, and ere long the comfortable, sensible, and artistic
-wardrobe of the rider will make the conventional style of woman’s
-dress absurd to the eye and unendurable to the understanding. A reform
-often advances most rapidly by indirection. An ounce of practice is
-worth a ton of theory; and the graceful and becoming costume of woman
-on the bicycle will convince the world that has brushed aside the
-theories, no matter how well constructed, and the arguments, no matter
-how logical, of dress-reformers.
-
-A woman with bands hanging on her hips, and dress snug about the waist
-and chokingly tight at the throat, with heavily trimmed skirts
-dragging down the back and numerous folds heating the lower part of
-the spine, and with tight shoes, ought to be in agony. She ought to be
-as miserable as a stalwart man would be in the same plight. And the
-fact that she can coolly and complacently assert that her clothing is
-perfectly easy, and that she does not want anything more comfortable
-or convenient, is the most conclusive proof that she is altogether
-abnormal bodily, and not a little so in mind.
-
-We saw with satisfaction the great advantage in good fellowship and
-mutual understanding between men and women who take the road together,
-sharing its hardships and rejoicing in the poetry of motion through
-landscapes breathing nature’s inexhaustible charm and skyscapes
-lifting the heart from what is to what shall be hereafter. We
-discoursed on the advantage to masculine character of comradeship with
-women who were as skilled and ingenious in the manipulation of the
-swift steed as they themselves. We contended that whatever diminishes
-the sense of superiority in men makes them more manly, brotherly, and
-pleasant to have about; we felt sure that the bluff, the swagger, the
-bravado of young England in his teens would not outlive the complete
-mastery of the outdoor arts in which his sister is now successfully
-engaged. The old fables, myths, and follies associated with the idea
-of woman’s incompetence to handle bat and oar, bridle and rein, and at
-last the cross-bar of the bicycle, are passing into contempt in
-presence of the nimbleness, agility, and skill of “that boy’s sister”;
-indeed, we felt that if she continued to improve after the fashion of
-the last decade her physical achievements will be such that it will
-become the pride of many a ruddy youth to be known as “that girl’s
-brother.” As we discoursed of life, death, and the judgment to come,
-of “man’s inhumanity to man,” as well as to beasts, birds, and
-creeping things, we frequently recurred to a phrase that has become
-habitual with me in these later years when other worlds seem anchored
-close alongside this, and when the telephone, the phonograph, and the
-microphone begin to show us that every breath carries in itself not
-only the power, but the scientific certainty of registration: “Well,
-one thing is certain: we shall meet it in the ether.”
-
-One of my companions in the tribulation of learning the bicycle, and
-the grace of its mastery, was a tall, bright-faced, vigorous-minded
-young Celt who is devoted to every good word and work and has had much
-experience with the “submerged tenth,” living among them and trying to
-build character among those waste places of humanity. I set out to
-teach this young woman the bicycle, and while she took her
-lesson—which, as she is young, elastic, and long-limbed, was vastly
-less difficult than mine—we talked of many things: American women, and
-why they do not walk; the English lower class, and why they are less
-vigorous than the Irish; the English girl of the slums, and why she is
-less self-respecting than an Irish girl in the same station. “There
-are many things for which we cannot account,” said my young friend;
-whereupon, with the self-elected mentorship of my half-century, I
-oracularly observed: “Cosmos has not a consequence without a cause; it
-is the business of reason to seek for causes, and, if it cannot make
-sure of them, to construct for itself theories as to what they are or
-will turn out to be when found. But the trouble is, when we have
-framed our theory, we come to look upon it as our child, that we have
-brought into the world, nurtured, and trained up by hand. The curse of
-life is that men will insist on holding their theories as true and
-imposing them on others; this gives rise to creeds, customs,
-constitutions, royalties, governments. Happy is he who knows that he
-knows nothing, or next to nothing, and holds his opinions like a
-bouquet of flowers in his hand, that sheds its fragrance everywhere,
-and which he is willing to exchange at any moment for one fairer and
-more sweet, instead of strapping them on like an armor of steel and
-thrusting with his lance those who do not accept his notions.”
-
-My last teacher was—as ought to be the case on the principle of
-climax—my best. I think she might have given many a pointer to folks
-that bring up children, and I realized that no matter how one may
-think himself accomplished, when he sets out to learn a new language,
-science, or the bicycle he has entered a new realm as truly as if he
-were a child newly born into the world, and “Except ye become as
-little children” is the law by which he is governed. Whether he will
-or not he must first creep, then walk, then run; and the wisest guide
-he can have is the one who most studiously helps him to help himself.
-This was a truism that I had heard all my life long, but never did a
-realizing sense of it settle down upon my spirit so thoroughly as when
-I learned the bicycle. It is not the teacher who holds you in place by
-main strength that is going to help you win that elusive, reluctant,
-inevitable prize we call success, but it is the one who, while
-studiously keeping in the background, steers you to the fore. So
-No. 12 had the wit and wisdom to retire to the rear of the saucy
-steed, that I might form the habit of seeing no sign of aid or comfort
-from any source except my own reaction on the treadles according to
-law; yet cunningly contrived, by laying a skilled hand upon the saddle
-without my observation, knowledge, or consent, to aid me in my
-balancing. She diminished the weight thus set to my account as rapidly
-as my own increasing courage and skill rendered this possible.
-
- [Illustration: “IT’S DOGGED AS DOES IT.”
- _Yorkshire Proverb._]
-
-I have always observed—and not without a certain pleasure, remembering
-my brother’s hardihood—that wherever a woman goes some man has reached
-the place before her; and it did not dim the verdure of my laurels or
-the fullness of my content when I had mastered Gladys to ascertain,
-from a letter sent me by the wife of a man sixty-four years of age
-who had just learned, that I was “No. 2” instead of “No. 1,” thus
-obliging me to rectify the frontier of chronology as I had constructed
-it in relation to the conquest of the bicycle; for I vainly thought
-that I had fought the antics of Gladys as a sentry on duty away out on
-the extreme frontier of time.
-
-But at last (which means in two months or thereabouts, at ten or
-twenty minutes’ practice off and on daily) I reached the goal, and
-could mount the bicycle without the slightest foreign interference or
-even the moral support of a sympathetic onlooker. In doing this I
-realized that the totality of what I had learned entered into the
-action. Every added increment of power that I had gained in balancing,
-pedaling, steering, taking advantage of the surfaces, adjusting my
-weight according to my own peculiarities, and so on, was set to my
-account when I began to manage the bulky steed that behaves worst of
-all when a novice seeks the saddle and strikes out alone. Just so, I
-felt, it had been all my life and will be, doubtless, in all worlds
-and with us all. The totality of native forces and acquired discipline
-and expert knowledge stands us in good stead for each crisis that we
-have to meet. There is a momentum, a cumulative power on which we can
-count in every new circumstance, as a capitalist counts upon his
-credit at the bank. It is not only a divine declaration, it is one of
-the basic laws of being, that “all things work _together_ for good to
-them that love God”—that is, to them that are in love with God; and he
-who loves a law of God and makes himself obedient to that law has by
-that much loved God, only he does not always have the wit to know it.
-
-The one who has learned latest and yet has really learned the mastery
-of the bicycle is the best teacher. Many a time I have heard boys in
-college say that it was not the famed mathematician who could teach
-them anything—he knew too much, he was too far ahead for them to hear
-his voice, he was impatient of their halting steps; but the tutor who
-had left college only the year before, and remembering his own
-failures and stupidity, had still that fellow-feeling that made him
-wondrous kind.
-
-As has been stated, my last epoch consisted of learning to mount; that
-is the _pons asinorum_ of the whole mathematical undertaking, for
-mathematical it is to a nicety. You have to balance your system more
-carefully than you ever did your accounts; not the smallest fraction
-can be out of the way, or away you go, the treacherous steed forming
-one half of an equation and yourself with a bruised knee forming the
-other. You must add a stroke at just the right angle to mount,
-subtract one to descend, divide them equally to hold your seat, and
-multiply all these movements in definite ratio and true proportion by
-the swiftest of all roots, or you will become the most minus of
-quantities. You must foot up your accounts with the strictest
-regularity; there can be no partial payments in a business enterprise
-like this.
-
-Although I could now mount and descend, turn corners and get over the
-ground all by myself, I still felt a lack of complete faith in Gladys,
-although she had never harmed me but once, and then it was my own
-fault in letting go the gleaming cross-bar, which is equivalent to
-dropping the bridle of a spirited steed. Let it be carefully
-remembered by every “beginning” bicycler that, whatever she forgets,
-she must forever keep her “main hold,” else her horse is not bitted
-and will shy to a dead certainty.
-
-As we grew better acquainted I thought how perfectly analogous were
-our relations to those of friends who became slowly seasoned one to
-the other: they have endured the vicissitudes of every kind of
-climate, of the changing seasons; they have known the heavy,
-water-logged conditions of spring, the shrinkage of summer’s trying
-heat, the happy medium of autumn, and the contracting cold that
-winter brings; they are like the bits of wood, exactly apportioned and
-attuned, that go to make up a Stradivarius violin. They can count upon
-one another and not disagree, because the stress of life has molded
-them to harmony. They are like the well-worn robe, the easy shoe.
-There is no short road to this adjustment, so much to be desired; not
-any will win it short of “patient continuance in well-doing.”
-
-I noticed that the great law which I believe to be potential
-throughout the universe made no exception here: “According to thy
-faith be it unto thee” was the only law of success. When I felt sure
-that I should do my pedaling with judicial accuracy, and did not
-permit myself to dread the swift motion round a bend; when I formed in
-my mind the image of a successful ascent of the “Priory Rise”; when I
-fully purposed in my mind that I should not run into the hedge on the
-one side or the iron fence on the other, these prophecies were
-fulfilled with practical certainty. I fell into the habit of varying
-my experience by placing before myself the image—so germane to the
-work in which I am engaged—of an inebriate in action, and accompanied
-this mental panorama by an orchestral effect of my own producing:
-“They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man;” but could
-never go through this three consecutive times without lurching off the
-saddle. But when I put before me, as distinctly as my powers of
-concentration would permit, the image of my mother holding steadily
-above me a pair of balances, and looking at me with that quizzical
-expectant glance I knew so well, and saying: “Do it? Of course you’ll
-do it; what else should you do?” I found that it was palpably helpful
-in enabling me to “sit straight and hold my own” on my uncertain
-steed. She always maintained, in the long talks we had concerning
-immortality, that the law I mention was conclusive, and was wont to
-close our conversations on that subject (in which I held the
-interrogative position) with some such remark as this: “If Professor
-—— thinks he is not immortal he probably is not; if I think I am I may
-be sure I shall be, for is it not written in the law, ‘According to
-thy faith be it unto thee’?”
-
-Gradually I realized a consoling degree of mastery over Gladys; but
-nothing was more apparent to me than that we were not yet thoroughly
-acquainted—we had not summered and wintered together. I had not
-learned her kinks, and she was as full of them as the most spirited
-mare that sweeps the course on a Kentucky race-track. Although I have
-seen a race but once (and that was in the Champs Élysées, Paris, a
-quarter of a century ago), I am yet so much interested in the fact
-that it is a Flora Temple, a Goldsmith Maid, a Maud S., a Sunol, a
-California Maid that often stands first on the record, that I would
-fain have named my shying steed after one of these; but as she was a
-gift from Lady Henry Somerset this seemed invidious in me as a Yankee
-woman, and so I called her _Gladys_, having in view the bright spirit
-of the donor, the exhilarating motion of the machine, and the
-gladdening effect of its acquaintance and use on my health and
-disposition.
-
-As I have said, I found from first to last that the process of
-acquisition exactly coincided with that which had given me everything
-I possessed of physical, mental, or moral success—that is, skill,
-knowledge, character. I was learning the bicycle precisely as I
-learned the a-b-c. When I set myself, as a stint, to mount and descend
-in regular succession anywhere from twenty to fifty times, it was on
-the principle that we do a thing more easily the second time than the
-first, the third time than the second, and so on in a rapidly
-increasing ratio, until it is done without any conscious effort
-whatever. This was precisely the way in which my mother trained me to
-tell the truth, and my music-teacher taught me that mastership of the
-piano keyboard which I have lost by disuse. Falling from grace may
-mean falling from a habit formed—how do we know? This opens a
-boundless field of ethical speculation which I would gladly have
-followed, but just then the steel steed gave a lurch as if to say,
-“Tend to your knitting”—the favorite expression of a Rocky Mountain
-stage-driver when tourists taxed him with questions while he was
-turning round a bend two thousand feet above the valley.
-
-And now comes the question “What do the doctors say?” Here follow
-several testimonies:
-
-“The question now of great interest to girls is in regard to the
-healthfulness of the wheel. Many are prophesying dire results from
-this fascinating exercise, and fond parents are refusing to allow
-their daughters to ride because they are girls. It will be a delight
-to girls to learn that the fact of their sex is, in itself, not a bar
-to riding a wheel. If the girl is normally constituted and is dressed
-hygienically, and if she will use judgment and not overtax herself in
-learning to ride, and in measuring the length of rides after she has
-learned, she is in no more danger from riding a wheel than is the
-young man. But if she persists in riding in a tight dress, and uses no
-judgment in deciding the amount of exercise she is capable of safely
-taking, it will be quite possible for her to injure herself, and then
-it is she, and not the wheel, that is to blame. Many physicians are
-now coming to regard the ‘wheel’ as beneficial to the health of women
-as well as of men.”
-
-Dr. Seneca Egbert says: “As an exercise bicycling is superior to most,
-if not all, others at our command. It takes one into the outdoor air;
-it is entirely under control; can be made gentle or vigorous as one
-desires; is active and not passive; takes the rider outside of himself
-and the thoughts and cares of his daily work; develops his will, his
-attention, his courage and independence, and makes pleasant what is
-otherwise most irksome. Moreover, the exercise is well and equally
-distributed over almost the whole body, and, as Parker says, when all
-the muscles are exercised no muscle is likely to be over-exercised.”
-
-He advocates cycling as a remedy for dyspepsia, torpid liver,
-incipient consumption, nervous exhaustion, rheumatism, and
-melancholia. In regard to the exercise for women he says: “It gets
-them out of doors, gives them a form of exercise adapted to their
-needs, that they may enjoy in company with others or alone, and one
-that goes to the root of their nervous troubles.”
-
-He instances two cases, of girls fourteen and eighteen years of age,
-where a decided increase in height could be fairly attributed to
-cycling.
-
- [Illustration: “LET GO—BUT STAND BY.”]
-
-The question is often asked if riding a wheel is not the same as
-running a sewing-machine. Let the same doctor answer: “Not at all.
-Women, at least, sit erect on a wheel, and consequently the thighs
-never make even a right angle with the trunk, and there is no stasis
-of blood in the lower limbs and genitalia. Moreover, the work itself
-makes the rider breathe in oceans of fresh air; while the woman at the
-sewing-machine works indoors, stoops over her work, contracting the
-chest and almost completely checking the flow of blood to and from the
-lower half of her body, where at the same time she is increasing the
-demand for it, finally aggravating the whole trouble by the pressure
-of the lower edge of the corset against the abdomen, so that the
-customary congestions and displacements have good cause for their
-existence.”
-
-“The great desideratum in all recreations is pure air, plenty of it,
-and lungs free to absorb it.” (Dr. Lyman B. Sperry.)
-
-“Let go, but stand by”—this is the golden rule for parent and pastor,
-teacher and friend; the only rule that at once respects the
-individuality of another and yet adds one’s own, so far as may be, to
-another’s momentum in the struggle of life.
-
-How difficult it is for the trainer to judge exactly how much force
-to exercise in helping to steer the wheel and start the wheeler along
-the macadamized highway! In this the point of view makes all the
-difference. The trainer is tall, the rider short; the first can poise
-on the off-treadle while one foot is on the ground, but the last must
-learn to balance while one foot is in the air. For one of these
-perfectly to comprehend the other’s relation to the vehicle is
-practically impossible; the degree to which he may attain this depends
-upon the amount of imagination to the square inch with which he has
-been fitted out. The opacity of the mind, its inability to project
-itself into the realm of another’s personality, goes a long way to
-explain the friction of life. If we would set down other people’s
-errors to this rather than to malice prepense we should not only get
-more good out of life and feel more kindly toward our fellows, but
-doubtless the rectitude of our intellects would increase, and the
-justice of our judgments. For instance, it is my purpose, so far as I
-understand myself, to be considerate toward those about me; but my
-pursuits have been almost purely mental, and to perceive what would
-seem just to one whose pursuits have been almost purely mechanical
-would require an act of imagination of which I am wholly incapable. We
-are so shut away from one another that none tells those about him what
-he considers ideal treatment on their part toward him. He thinks about
-it all the same, mumbles about it to himself, mutters about it to
-those of his own guild, and these mutterings make the discontent that
-finally breaks out in reforms whose tendency is to distribute the good
-things of this life more equally among the living. But nothing will
-probe to the core of this the greatest disadvantage under which we
-labor—that is, mutual non-comprehension—except a basis of society and
-government which would make it easy for each to put himself in
-another’s place because his place is so much like another’s. We shall
-be less imaginative, perhaps, in those days—the critics say this is
-inevitable; but it will only be because we need less imagination in
-order to do that which is just and kind to every one about us.
-
-In my early home my father always set us children to work by
-stints—that is, he measured off a certain part of the garden to be
-weeded, or other work to be done, and when we had accomplished it our
-working-hours were over. With this deeply ingrained habit in full
-force I set myself stints with the bicycle. In the later part of my
-novitiate fifty attempts a day were allotted to that most difficult of
-all achievements, learning to mount, and I calculate that five hundred
-such efforts well put in will solve that most intricate problem of
-specific gravity.
-
-Now concerning falls: I set out with the determination not to have
-any. Though mentally adventurous I have always been physically
-cautious; a student of physiology in my youth, I knew the reason why
-I brought so much less elasticity to my task than did my young and
-agile trainers. I knew the penalty of broken bones, for these a
-tricycle had cost me some years before. My trainers were kind enough
-to encourage me by saying that if I became an expert in slow riding I
-should take the rapid wheel as a matter of course and thus be really
-more accomplished (in the long run as well as the short) than by any
-other process. So I have had but one real downfall to record as the
-result of my three months’ practice, and it illustrates the old saying
-that “pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a
-fall”; for I was not a little lifted up by having learned to dismount
-with confidence and ease—I will not say with grace, for at fifty-three
-that would be an affectation—so one bright morning I bowled on down
-the Priory drive waving my hand to my most adventurous aide-de-camp,
-and calling out as I left her behind, “Now you will see how nicely I
-can do it—watch!” when behold! that timid left foot turned traitor,
-and I came down solidly on my knee, and the knee on a pebble as
-relentless as prejudice and as opinionated as ignorance. The nervous
-shock made me well-nigh faint, the bicycle tumbled over on my prone
-figure, and I wished I had never heard of Gladys or of any wheel save
-
- “Fly swiftly round, ye wheels of time,
- And bring the welcome day—”
-
-of my release into the ether.
-
-Let me remark to any young woman who reads this page that for her to
-tumble off her bike is inexcusable. The lightsome elasticity of every
-muscle, the quickness of the eye, the agility of motion, ought to
-preserve her from such a catastrophe. I have had no more falls simply
-because I would not. I have proceeded on a basis of the utmost
-caution, and aside from that one pitiful performance the bicycle has
-cost me hardly a single bruise.
-
-
-AN ETHEREAL EPISODE
-
-They that know nothing fear nothing. Away back in 1886 my alert young
-friend, Miss Anna Gordon, and my ingenious young niece, Miss Katharine
-Willard, took to the tricycle as naturally as ducks take to water. The
-very first time they mounted they went spinning down the long shady
-street, with its pleasant elms, in front of Rest Cottage, where for
-nearly a generation mother and I had had our home. Even as the
-war-horse snuffeth the battle from afar, I longed to go and do
-likewise. Remembering my country bringing-up and various exploits in
-running, climbing, horseback-riding, to say nothing of my tame heifer
-that I trained for a Bucephalus, I said to myself, “If those girls can
-ride without learning so can I!” Taking out my watch I timed them as
-they, at my suggestion, set out to make a record in going round the
-square. Two and a half minutes was the result. I then started with all
-my forces well in hand, and flew around in two and a quarter minutes.
-Not contented with this, but puffed up with foolish vanity, I declared
-that I would go around in two minutes; and, encouraged by their
-cheers, away I went without a fear till the third turning-post was
-reached, when the left hand played me false, and turning at an acute
-angle, away I went sidelong, machine and all, into the gutter, falling
-on my right elbow, which felt like a glassful of chopped ice, and I
-knew that for the first time in a life full of vicissitudes I had been
-really hurt. Anna Gordon’s white face as she ran toward me caused me
-to wave my uninjured hand and call out, “Never mind!” and with her
-help I rose and walked into the house, wishing above all things to go
-straight to my own room and lie on my own bed, and thinking as I did
-so how pathetic is that instinct that makes “the stricken deer go
-weep,” the harmed hare seek the covert.
-
-Two physicians were soon at my side, and my mother, then over eighty
-years of age, came in with much controlled agitation and seated
-herself beside my bed, taking my hand and saying, “O Frank! you were
-always too adventurous.”
-
-Our family physician was out of town, and the two gentlemen were
-well-nigh strangers. It was a kind face, that of the tall, thin man
-who looked down upon me in my humiliation, put his ear against my
-heart to see if there would be any harm in administering ether,
-handled my elbow with a woman’s gentleness, and then said to his
-assistant, “Now let us begin.” And to me who had been always well, and
-knew nothing of such unnatural proceedings, he remarked, “Breathe into
-the funnel—full, natural breaths; that is all you have to do.”
-
-I set myself to my task, as has been my wont always, and soon my
-mother and my friend, Anna Gordon, who were fanning me with big
-“palm-leaves,” became grotesque and then ridiculous, and I remember
-saying (or at least I remember that I once remembered), “You are a
-couple of enormous crickets standing on your hind legs, and you have
-each a spear of dry grass, and you look as if you were paralyzed; and
-you wave your withered spears of grass, and you call that fanning a
-poor woman who is suffocating before your eyes.” I labored with them,
-entreated them, and dealt with them in great plainness—so much so that
-my mother could not bear to hear me talk in such a foolish fashion,
-and quietly withdrew to her own room, closed the door, and sat down to
-possess her soul in patience until the operation should be over.
-
-Then the scene changed, and as they put on the splints pain was
-involved, and I heard those about me laughing in the most unfeeling
-manner while I murmured: “She always believed in humanity—she always
-said she did and would; and she has lived in this town thirty years,
-and they are hurting her—they are hurting her dreadfully; and if they
-keep on she will lose her faith in human nature, and if she should it
-will be the greatest calamity that can happen to a human being.”
-
-Now the scene changed once more—I was in the starry heavens, and said
-to the young friends who had come in and stood beside me: “Here are
-stars as thick as apples on a bough, and if you are good you shall
-each have one. And, Anna, because you _are_ good, and always have
-been, you shall be given a whole solar system to manage just as you
-like. The Heavenly Father has no end of them; He tosses them out of
-His hand as a boy does marbles; He spins them like a cocoon; He has
-just as many after He has given them away as He had before He began.”
-
-Then there settled down upon me the most vivid and pervading sense of
-the love of God that I have ever known. I can give no adequate
-conception of it, and what I said, as my comrades repeated it to me,
-was something after this order:
-
-“We are like blood-drops floating through the great heart of our
-Heavenly Father. We are infinitely safe, and cared for as tenderly as
-a baby in its mother’s arms. No harm can come anywhere near us; what
-we call harm will turn out to be the very best and kindest way of
-leading us to be our best selves. There is no terror in the universe,
-for God is always at the center of everything. He is love, as we read
-in the good book, and He has but one wish—that we should love one
-another; in Him we live, and move, and have our being.”
-
-Little by little, freeing my mind of all sorts of queer notions, I
-came back out of the only experience of the kind that I have ever
-known; but I must say that had I not learned the great evils that
-result from using anesthetics I should have wished to try ether again,
-just for the ethical and spiritual help that came to me. It let me out
-into a new world, greater, more mellow, more godlike, and it did me no
-harm at all.
-
-During the time my arm was in a sling I “sat about”—something not
-easy to do for one of active mind and life. I learned to write with my
-left hand—for this was before the happy days of the many
-stenographers—and my hieroglyphics went out to all the leading
-temperance women of this country. One morning the bell, distant and
-musical, tolled in the steeple of the university. We knew it meant
-that General Grant was dead, for the newspapers and despatches of the
-previous evening had prepared us. Somehow a deep chord in my soul
-vibrated to the tone of the bell—a chord of patriotism—and I went away
-to the vine-covered piazza, where I was wont to sit, and in twenty
-minutes (which fact is my apology for their limping feet) wrote out my
-heart in the following lines. They had at least the merit of sincere
-devotion, and were telephoned to Chicago, eleven miles away, by Anna
-Gordon, and appearing in the daily _Inter-Ocean_ were read at their
-breakfast-tables by many other patriots next morning. I do not know
-when anything has given me more real pleasure than to be told that a
-stalwart soldier belonging to the Grand Army of the Republic read my
-crude but heartfelt lines aloud to his wife and daughter, and at the
-close brushed away a manly tear.
-
-
-GRANT IS DEAD.
-
-_On Hearing the University Bell at Evanston, Ill., Toll for the Death
-of General Grant at Nine O’clock A.M., July 23, 1885._
-
- Toll, bells, from every steeple,
- Tell the sorrow of the people;
- Moan, sullen guns, and sigh
- For the greatest who could die.
- Grant is dead.
-
- Never so firm were set those moveless lips as now,
- Never so dauntless shone that massive brow;
- The silent man has passed into the silent tomb.
- Ring out our grief, sweet bell,
- The people’s sorrow tell
- For the greatest who could die.
- Grant is dead.
-
- “Let us have peace!” Great heart,
- That peace has come to thee;
- Thy sword for freedom wrought,
- And now thy soul is free,
- While a rescued nation stands
- Mourning its fallen chief—
- The Southern with the Northern lands,
- Akin in honest grief.
- The hands of black and white
- Shall clasp above thy grave,
- Children of the Republic all,
- No master and no slave.
- Almost “all summer on this line”
- Thou steadily didst “fight it out”;
- But Death, the silent,
- Matched at last our silent chief,
- And put to rout his brave defense.
- Moan, sullen guns, and sigh
- For the bravest who could die.
- Grant is dead.
-
- The huge world holds to-day
- No fame so great, so wide,
- As his whose steady eyes grew dim
- On Mount McGregor’s side
- Only an hour ago, and yet
- The whole great world has learned
- That Grant is dead.
-
- O heart of Christ! what joy
- Brings earth’s new brotherhood!
- All lands as one,
- Buckner, Grant’s bed beside,
- The priest and Protestant in converse kind;
- Prayers from all hearts, and Grant
- Praying “we all might meet in better worlds.”
- Toll, bells, from every steeple,
- Tell the sorrow of the people;
- So true in life, so calm and strong,
- Bravest of all, in death suffering so long
- And without one complaint!
- Moan, sullen guns, and sigh
- For the greatest who could die;
- Salute the nation’s head.
- Our Grant is dead.
-
-
-IN CONCLUSION
-
-If I am asked to explain why I learned the bicycle I should say I did
-it as an act of grace, if not of actual religion. The cardinal
-doctrine laid down by my physician was, “Live out of doors and take
-congenial exercise;” but from the day when, at sixteen years of age, I
-was enwrapped in the long skirts that impeded every footstep, I have
-detested walking and felt with a certain noble disdain that the
-conventions of life had cut me off from what in the freedom of my
-prairie home had been one of life’s sweetest joys. Driving is not real
-exercise; it does not renovate the river of blood that flows so
-sluggishly in the veins of those who from any cause have lost the
-natural adjustment of brain to brawn. Horseback-riding, which does
-promise vigorous exercise, is expensive. The bicycle meets all the
-conditions and will ere long come within the reach of all. Therefore,
-in obedience to the laws of health, I learned to ride. I also wanted
-to help women to a wider world, for I hold that the more interests
-women and men can have in common, in thought, word, and deed, the
-happier will it be for the home. Besides, there was a special value to
-women in the conquest of the bicycle by a woman in her fifty-third
-year, and one who had so many comrades in the white-ribbon army that
-her action would be widely influential. Then there were three minor
-reasons:
-
- [Illustration: “AT LAST.”]
-
-I did it from pure natural love of adventure—a love long hampered and
-impeded, like a brook that runs underground, but in this enterprise
-bubbling up again with somewhat of its pristine freshness and taking
-its merry course as of old.
-
-Second, from a love of acquiring this new implement of power and
-literally putting it underfoot.
-
-Last, but not least, because a good many people thought I could not do
-it at my age.
-
-It is needless to say that a bicycling costume was a prerequisite.
-This consisted of a skirt and blouse of tweed, with belt, rolling
-collar, and loose cravat, the skirt three inches from the ground; a
-round straw hat, and walking-shoes with gaiters. It was a simple,
-modest suit, to which no person of common sense could take exception.
-
-As nearly as I can make out, reducing the problem to actual figures,
-it took me about three months, with an average of fifteen minutes’
-practice daily, to learn, first, to pedal; second, to turn; third, to
-dismount; and fourth, to mount independently this most mysterious
-animal. January 20th will always be a red-letter bicycle day, because
-although I had already mounted several times with no hand on the
-rudder, some good friend had always stood by to lend moral support;
-but summoning all my force, and, most forcible of all, what Sir
-Benjamin Ward Richardson declares to be the two essential
-elements—decision and precision—I mounted and started off alone. From
-that hour the spell was broken; Gladys was no more a mystery: I had
-learned all her kinks, had put a bridle in her teeth, and touched her
-smartly with the whip of victory. Consider, ye who are of a
-considerable chronology: in about thirteen hundred minutes, or, to put
-it more mildly, in twenty-two hours, or, to put it most mildly of all,
-in less than a single day as the almanac reckons time—but practically
-in two days of actual practice—amid the delightful surroundings of the
-great outdoors, and inspired by the bird-songs, the color and
-fragrance of an English posy-garden, in the company of devoted and
-pleasant comrades, I had made myself master of the most remarkable,
-ingenious, and inspiring motor ever yet devised upon this planet.
-
-Moral: _Go thou and do likewise!_
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Note
-
-
-Inconsistent hyphenation (horseback-riding/horseback riding) has been
-retained as printed.
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's A Wheel Within a Wheel, by Frances E. Willard
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-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Wheel Within a Wheel, by Frances E. Willard
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll
-have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
-this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: A Wheel Within a Wheel
- How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle
-
-Author: Frances E. Willard
-
-Release Date: September 25, 2019 [EBook #60356]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Wilson and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-
-
-<hr class="ww" />
-
-
-<div class="frontcover">
-<a name="cover" id="cover" href="#cover"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>cover<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a><img id="frontcover" src="images/cover.jpg"
- alt="[Cover: A Wheel within a Wheel &mdash;
- How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle &mdash;
- Frances E. Willard]" />
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="halftitle">
-
-<p><a name="png.001" id="png.001" href="#png.001"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>i<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a>A WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL</p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="frontispiece">
-<a name="png.004" id="png.004" href="#png.004"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>2<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a><img id="frontis" src="images/i004.jpg"
- alt="[Illustration: Frances E Willard]" />
-</div>
-
-
-
-<div class="titlepage">
-<h1 title="A Wheel within a Wheel"><a name="png.005" id="png.005" href="#png.005"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>3<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a>A WHEEL <small>WITHIN</small> A WHEEL</h1>
-
-<p><small>HOW I LEARNED TO<br
- />RIDE THE BICYCLE</small></p>
-
-<p><i>WITH SOME REFLECTIONS BY THE WAY</i></p>
-
-<p id="byline"><small>BY</small><br
- /><big>FRANCES E. WILLARD</big></p>
-
-<p class="oeng">Illustrated</p>
-
-<p><img src="images/wheel.jpg" width="60" height="59"
- alt="[Decoration: Spoked wheel]" /></p>
-
-<p>FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY<br
- /><small><span class="smc">New York      Chicago      Toronto</span><br
- />1895</small></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="verso">
-<p><a name="png.006" id="png.006" href="#png.006"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>4<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a><small>Copyright, 1895,<br
- /><span class="smc">By Fleming H. Revell Company.</span></small></p>
-</div>
-
-
-
-<div class="dedication">
-<p><a name="png.007" id="png.007" href="#png.007"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>5<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a><small>GRATEFULLY DEDICATED<br
- />TO</small><br
- />LADY HENRY SOMERSET,<br
- /><small>WHO GAVE ME “GLADYS,”<br
- />THAT HARBINGER OF HEALTH AND HAPPINESS.</small></p>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="loi">
-<h2 title="List of Illustrations"><a name="png.009" id="png.009" href="#png.009"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>7<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
-
-<hr class="short" />
-
-<table summary="List of Illustrations">
-<tr><th> </th><th>PAGE</th></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="dots"><span class="dotz"><a href="#png.004">Miss Willard</a></span></td><td class="pg"><a href="#png.004"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="dots"><span class="dotz"><a href="#png.024">A Lack of Balance</a></span></td><td class="pg"><i>facing page</i> <a href="#png.024">21</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="dots"><span class="dotz"><a href="#png.034">Eastnor Castle</a></span></td><td class="pg"><a href="#png.034">29</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="dots"><span class="dotz"><a href="#png.043">“So Easy—When You Know How”</a></span></td><td class="pg"><a href="#png.043">36</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="dots"><span class="dotz"><a href="#png.053">“It’s Dogged as Does It”</a></span></td><td class="pg"><a href="#png.053">44</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="dots"><span class="dotz"><a href="#png.068">“Let Go—but Stand By”</a></span></td><td class="pg"><a href="#png.068">57</a></td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="dots"><span class="dotz"><a href="#png.085">“At Last”</a></span></td><td class="pg"><a href="#png.085">72</a></td></tr>
-</table>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="section">
-<h2 title="A Wheel within a Wheel"><a name="png.011" id="png.011" href="#png.011"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>9<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a><big>A WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL</big></h2>
-
-<hr class="short" />
-
-
-<h3>PRELIMINARY</h3>
-
-<div class="drop">
-<img class="cap" src="images/dropf.jpg" alt="F" width="81" height="82"
- /><p class="cap">FROM my earliest recollections, and
-up to the ripe age of fifty-three, I
-had been an active and diligent
-worker in the world. This sounds absurd;
-but having almost no toys except such as I
-could manufacture, my first plays were but
-the outdoor work of active men and women
-on a small scale. Born with an inveterate
-opposition to staying in the house, I very
-early learned to use a carpenter’s kit and a
-gardener’s tools, and followed in my mimic
-way the occupations of the poulterer and the
-farmer, working my little field with a wooden
-plow of my own making, and felling saplings
-<a name="png.012" id="png.012" href="#png.012"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>10<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>with an ax rigged up from the old iron of the
-wagon-shop. Living in the country, far from
-the artificial restraints and conventions by
-which most girls are hedged from the activities
-that would develop a good physique, and
-endowed with the companionship of a mother
-who let me have my own sweet will, I “ran
-wild” until my sixteenth birthday, when the
-hampering long skirts were brought, with
-their accompanying corset and high heels;
-my hair was clubbed up with pins, and I remember
-writing in my journal, in the first
-heartbreak of a young human colt taken from
-its pleasant pasture, “Altogether, I recognize
-that my occupation is gone.”</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>From that time on I always realized and
-was obedient to the limitations thus imposed,
-though in my heart of hearts I felt their unwisdom
-even more than their injustice. My
-work then changed from my beloved and
-breezy outdoor world to the indoor realm of
-study, teaching, writing, speaking, and went
-on almost without a break or pain until my
-<a name="png.013" id="png.013" href="#png.013"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>11<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>fifty-third year, when the loss of my mother
-accentuated the strain of this long period in
-which mental and physical life were out of
-balance, and I fell into a mild form of what
-is called nerve-wear by the patient and nervous
-prostration by the lookers-on. Thus
-ruthlessly thrown out of the usual lines of
-reaction on my environment, and sighing for
-new worlds to conquer, I determined that I
-would learn the bicycle.</p>
-
-<p>An English naval officer had said to me,
-after learning it himself, “You women have
-no idea of the new realm of happiness which
-the bicycle has opened to us men.” Already I
-knew well enough that tens of thousands who
-could never afford to own, feed, and stable
-a horse, had by this bright invention enjoyed
-the swiftness of motion which is perhaps the
-most fascinating feature of material life, the
-charm of a wide outlook upon the natural
-world, and that sense of mastery which is
-probably the greatest attraction in horseback-riding.
-But the steed that never tires, and is
-<a name="png.014" id="png.014" href="#png.014"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>12<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>“mettlesome” in the fullest sense of the
-word, is full of tricks and capers, and to hold
-his head steady and make him prance to suit
-you is no small accomplishment. I had often
-mentioned in my temperance writings that
-the bicycle was perhaps our strongest ally
-in winning young men away from public-houses,
-because it afforded them a pleasure
-far more enduring, and an exhilaration as
-much more delightful as the natural is than
-the unnatural. From my observation of my
-own brother and hundreds of young men
-who have been my pupils, I have always
-held that a boy’s heart is not set in him to
-do evil any more than a girl’s, and that the
-reason our young men fall into evil ways is
-largely because we have not had the wit and
-wisdom to provide them with amusements
-suited to their joyous youth, by means of
-which they could invest their superabundant
-animal spirits in ways that should harm no
-one and help themselves to the best development
-and the cleanliest ways of living. So
-<a name="png.015" id="png.015" href="#png.015"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>13<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>as a temperance reformer I always felt a
-strong attraction toward the bicycle, because
-it is the vehicle of so much harmless pleasure,
-and because the skill required in handling it
-obliges those who mount to keep clear heads
-and steady hands. Nor could I see a reason
-in the world why a woman should not ride
-the silent steed so swift and blithesome. I
-knew perfectly well that when, some ten or
-fifteen years ago, Miss Bertha von Hillern, a
-young German artist in America, took it into
-her head to give exhibitions of her skill in
-riding the bicycle she was thought by some
-to be a sort of semi-monster; and liberal as
-our people are in their views of what a
-woman may undertake, I should certainly
-have felt compromised, at that remote and
-benighted period, by going to see her ride,
-not because there was any harm in it, but
-solely because of what we call in homely
-phrase “the speech of people.” But behold!
-it was long ago conceded that women might
-ride the tricycle—indeed, one had been
-<a name="png.016" id="png.016" href="#png.016"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>14<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>presented to me by my friend Colonel Pope, of
-Boston, a famous manufacturer of these swift
-roadsters, as far back as 1886; and I had
-swung around the garden-paths upon its saddle
-a few minutes every evening when work
-was over at my Rest Cottage home. I had
-even hoped to give an impetus among conservative
-women to this new line of physical
-development and outdoor happiness; but
-that is quite another story and will come in
-later. Suffice it for the present that it did
-me good, as it doth the upright in heart, to
-notice recently that the Princesses Louise and
-Beatrice both ride the tricycle at Balmoral; for
-I know that with the great mass of feminine
-humanity this precedent will have exceeding
-weight—and where the tricycle prophesies
-the bicycle shall ere long preach the gospel
-of outdoors.</p>
-
-<p>For we are all unconsciously the slaves of
-public opinion. When the hansom first came
-on London streets no woman having regard
-to her social state and standing would have
-dreamed of entering one of these pavement
-<a name="png.017" id="png.017" href="#png.017"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>15<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>gondolas unless accompanied by a gentleman
-as her escort. But in course of time a few
-women, of stronger individuality than the
-average, ventured to go unattended; later
-on, use wore off the glamour of the traditions
-which said that women must not go alone,
-and now none but an imbecile would hold
-herself to any such observance.</p>
-
-<p>A trip around the world by a young woman
-would have been regarded a quarter of
-a century ago as equivalent to social outlawry;
-but now young women of the highest
-character and talent are employed by leading
-journals to whip around the world “on time,”
-and one has done so in seventy-three, another
-in seventy-four days, while the young
-women recently sent out by an Edinburgh
-newspaper will no doubt considerably contract
-these figures.</p>
-
-<p>As I have mentioned, Fräulein von Hillern
-is the first woman, so far as I know, who ever
-rode a bicycle, and for this she was considered
-to be one of those persons who classified
-nowhere, and who could not do so except to
-<a name="png.018" id="png.018" href="#png.018"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>16<span class="ns">]</span></span></a>
-the injury of the feminine guild with which
-they were connected before they “stepped
-out”; but now, in France, for a woman to
-ride a bicycle is not only “good form,” but
-the current craze among the aristocracy.</p>
-
-<p>Since Balaam’s beast there has been but
-little authentic talking done by the four-footed;
-but that is no reason why the two-wheeled
-should not speak its mind, and the
-first utterance I have to chronicle in the softly
-flowing vocables of my bicycle is to the following
-purport. I heard it as we trundled off
-down the Priory incline at the suburban home
-of Lady Henry Somerset, Reigate, England;
-it said: “Behold, I do not fail you; I am not
-a skittish beastie, but a sober, well-conducted
-roadster. I did not ask you to mount or
-drive, but since you have done so you must
-now learn the laws of balance and exploitation.
-I did not invent these laws, but I have been
-built conformably to them, and you must
-suit yourself to the unchanging regulations of
-gravity, general and specific, as illustrated in
-<a name="png.019" id="png.019" href="#png.019"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>17<span class="ns">]</span></span></a>
-me. Strange as the paradox may seem, you
-will do this best by not trying to do it at all.
-You must make up what you are pleased to
-call your mind—make it up speedily, or you
-will be cast in yonder mud-puddle, and no
-blame to me and no thanks to yourself. Two
-things must occupy your thinking powers to
-the exclusion of every other thing: first, the
-goal; and, second, the momentum requisite
-to reach it. Do not look down like an imbecile
-upon the steering-wheel in front of
-you—that would be about as wise as for a
-nauseated voyager to keep his optical instruments
-fixed upon the rolling waves. It is
-the curse of life that nearly every one looks
-down. But the microscope will never set
-you free; you must glue your eyes to the
-telescope for ever and a day. Look up and
-off and on and out; get forehead and foot
-into line, the latter acting as a rhythmic spur
-in the flanks of your equilibriated equine; so
-shall you win, and that right speedily.</p>
-
-<p>“It was divinely said that the kingdom of
-<a name="png.020" id="png.020" href="#png.020"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>18<span class="ns">]</span></span></a>
-God is within you. Some make a mysticism
-of this declaration, but it is hard common
-sense; for the lesson you will learn from me is
-this: every kingdom over which we reign must
-be first formed within us on what the psychic
-people call the ‘astral plane,’ but what I as a
-bicycle look upon as the common parade-ground
-of individual thought.”</p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="section">
-<h3>THE PROCESS</h3>
-
-<p>Courtiers wittily say that horseback riding
-is the only thing in which a prince is apt to
-excel, for the reason that the horse never
-flatters and would as soon throw him as if he
-were a groom. Therefore it is only by actually
-mastering the art of riding that a prince
-can hold his place with the noblest of the
-four-footed animals.</p>
-
-<p>Happily there is now another locomotive
-contrivance which is no flatterer, and which
-peasant and prince must master, if they do
-this at all, by the democratic route of honest
-hard work. Well will it be for rulers when
-<a name="png.021" id="png.021" href="#png.021"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>19<span class="ns">]</span></span></a>
-the tough old Yorkshire proverb applies to
-them as strictly as to the lowest of their subjects:
-“<cite>It’s dogged as does it.</cite>” We all know
-the old saying, “Fire is a good servant, but
-a bad master.” This is equally true of the
-bicycle: if you give it an inch—nay, a hair—it
-will take an ell—nay, an evolution—and you a
-contusion, or, like enough, a perforated kneecap.</p>
-
-<p>Not a single friend encouraged me to learn
-the bicycle except an active-minded young
-school-teacher, Miss Luther, of my hometown,
-Evanston, who came several times with
-her wheel and gave me lessons. I also took
-a few lessons in a stuffy, semi-subterranean
-gallery in Chicago. But at fifty-three I was
-at more disadvantage than most people, for
-not only had I the impedimenta that result
-from the unnatural style of dress, but I also
-suffered from the sedentary habits of a lifetime.
-And then that small world (which is
-our real one) of those who loved me best,
-and who considered themselves largely
-<a name="png.022" id="png.022" href="#png.022"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>20<span class="ns">]</span></span></a>
-responsible for my every-day methods of life,
-did not encourage me, but in their affectionate
-solicitude—and with abundant reason—thought
-I should “break my bones” and
-“spoil my future.” It must be said, however,
-to their everlasting praise, that they
-opposed no objection when they saw that
-my will was firmly set to do this thing; on
-the contrary, they put me in the way of
-carrying out my purpose, and lent to my
-laborious lessons the light of their countenances
-reconciled. Actions speak so much
-louder than words that I here set before you
-what may be called a feminine bicycler’s first
-position—at least it was mine.</p>
-
-<div class="illo">
-<a name="png.024" id="png.024" href="#png.024"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>21a<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a><img id="balance" src="images/i024.jpg"
- alt="[Illustration: A LACK OF BALANCE.]" /><br
- /><span class="ns">    [Illustration: </span>A LACK OF BALANCE.<span class="ns">]</span>
-</div>
-
-<p>Given a safety-bicycle—pneumatic tires
-and all the rest of it which renders the pneumatic
-safety the only safe Bucephalus—the
-gearing carefully wired in so that we shall
-not be entangled. “Woe is me!” was my
-first exclamation, naturally enough interpreted
-by my outriders “Whoa is me,” and
-<a name="png.025" id="png.025" href="#png.025"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>21<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>they “whoaed”—indeed, we did little else
-but “check up.”</p>
-
-<p>(Just here let me interpolate: Learn on
-a low machine, but “fly high” when once
-you have mastered it, as you have much
-more power over the wheels and can get up
-better speed with a less expenditure of force
-when you are above the instrument than
-when you are at the back of it. And remember
-this is as true of the world as of the
-wheel.)</p>
-
-<p>The order of evolution was something like
-this: First, three young Englishmen, all
-strong-armed and accomplished bicyclers,
-held the machine in place while I climbed
-timidly into the saddle. Second, two well-disposed
-young women put in all the power
-they had, until they grew red in the face, offsetting
-each other’s pressure on the cross-bar
-and thus maintaining the equipoise to which
-I was unequal. Third, one walked beside
-me, steadying the ark as best she could by
-<a name="png.026" id="png.026" href="#png.026"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>22<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>holding the center of the deadly cross-bar, to
-let go whose handles meant chaos and collapse.
-After this I was able to hold my own
-if I had the moral support of my kind trainers,
-and it passed into a proverb among them, the
-short emphatic word of command I gave
-them at every few turns of the wheel: “Let
-go, but stand by.” Still later everything
-was learned—how to sit, how to pedal, how
-to turn, how to dismount; but alas! how to
-vault into the saddle I found not; that was
-the coveted power that lingered long and
-would not yield itself.</p>
-
-<p>That which caused the many failures I had
-in learning the bicycle had caused me failures
-in life; namely, a certain fearful looking for
-of judgment; a too vivid realization of the
-uncertainty of everything about me; an underlying
-doubt—at once, however (and this is
-all that saved me), matched and overcome by
-the determination not to give in to it.</p>
-
-<p>The best gains that we make come to us
-after an interval of rest which follows
-<a name="png.027" id="png.027" href="#png.027"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>23<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>strenuous endeavor. Having, as I hoped, mastered
-the rudiments of bicycling, I went away
-to Germany and for a fortnight did not even
-see the winsome wheel. Returning, I had
-the horse brought round, and mounted with
-no little trepidation, being assisted by one
-of my faithful guides; but behold! I found
-that in advancing, turning, and descending I
-was much more at home than when I had
-last exercised that new intelligence in the
-muscles which had been the result of repetitions
-resolutely attempted and practised long.</p>
-
-<p>Another thing I found is that we carry in
-the mind a picture of the road; and if it is
-humpy by reason of pebbles, even if we steer
-clear of them, we can by no means skim along
-as happily as when its smoothness facilitates
-the pleasing impression on the retina; indeed,
-the whole science and practice of the bicycle
-is “in your eye” and in your will; the rest
-is mere manipulation.</p>
-
-<p>As I have said, in many curious particulars
-the bicycle is like the world. When it had
-<a name="png.028" id="png.028" href="#png.028"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>24<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>thrown me painfully once (which was the
-extent of my downfalls during the entire process
-of learning, and did not prevent me from
-resuming my place on the back of the treacherous
-creature a few minutes afterward), and
-more especially when it threw one of my
-dearest friends, hurting her knee so that it
-was painful for a month, then for a time
-Gladys had gladsome ways for me no longer,
-but seemed the embodiment of misfortune
-and dread. Even so the world has often
-seemed in hours of darkness and despondency;
-its iron mechanism, its pitiless grind,
-its swift, silent, on-rolling gait have oppressed
-to pathos, if not to melancholy. Good health
-and plenty of oxygenated air have promptly
-restored the equilibrium. But how many a
-fine spirit, to finest issues touched, has been
-worn and shredded by the world’s mill until
-in desperation it flung itself away. We can
-easily carp at those who quit the crowded
-race-course without so much as saying “By
-your leave”; but “let him that thinketh he
-<a name="png.029" id="png.029" href="#png.029"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>25<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>standeth take heed lest he fall.” We owe it
-to nature, to nurture, to our environments,
-and, most of all, to our faith in God, that we,
-too, do not cry, like so many gentle hearts less
-brave and sturdy, “Anywhere, anywhere, out
-of the world.”</p>
-
-<p>Gradually, item by item, I learned the location
-of every screw and spring, spoke and
-tire, and every beam and bearing that went
-to make up Gladys. This was not the lesson
-of a day, but of many days and weeks, and it
-had to be learned before we could get on
-well together. To my mind the infelicities
-of which we see so much in life grow out of
-lack of time and patience thus to study and
-adjust the natures that have agreed in the
-sight of God and man to stand by one another
-to the last. They will not take the pains, they
-have not enough specific gravity, to balance
-themselves in their new environment. Indeed,
-I found a whole philosophy of life in the
-wooing and the winning of my bicycle.</p>
-
-<p>Just as a strong and skilful swimmer takes
-<a name="png.030" id="png.030" href="#png.030"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>26<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>the waves, so the bicycler must learn to take
-such waves of mental impression as the passing
-of a gigantic hay-wagon, the sudden obtrusion
-of black cattle with wide-branching
-horns, the rattling pace of high-stepping
-steeds, or even the swift transit of a railway-train.
-At first she will be upset by the apparition
-of the smallest poodle, and not until
-she has attained a wide experience will she
-hold herself steady in presence of the critical
-eyes of a coach-and-four. But all this is a
-part of that equilibration of thought and action
-by which we conquer the universe in
-conquering ourselves.</p>
-
-<p>I finally concluded that all failure was from
-a wobbling will rather than a wobbling wheel.
-I felt that indeed the will is the wheel of the
-mind—its perpetual motion having been
-learned when the morning stars sang together.
-When the wheel of the mind went
-well then the rubber wheel hummed merrily;
-but specters of the mind there are as well as
-of the wheel. In the aggregate of perception
-<a name="png.031" id="png.031" href="#png.031"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>27<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>concerning which we have reflected and
-from which we have deduced our generalizations
-upon the world without, within, above,
-there are so many ghastly and fantastical
-images that they must obtrude themselves
-at certain intervals, like filmy bits of glass
-in the turn of the kaleidoscope. Probably
-every accident of which I had heard or read
-in my half-century tinged the uncertainty
-that by the correlation of forces passed over
-into the tremor that I felt when we began to
-round the terminus bend of the broad Priory
-walk. And who shall say by what original
-energy the mind forced itself at once from
-the contemplation of disaster and thrust into
-the very movement of the foot on the pedal
-a concept of vigor, safety, and success? I
-began to feel that myself plus the bicycle
-equaled myself plus the world, upon whose
-spinning-wheel we must all learn to ride, or
-fall into the sluiceways of oblivion and despair.
-That which made me succeed with the bicycle
-was precisely what had gained me a measure
-<a name="png.032" id="png.032" href="#png.032"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>28<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>of success in life—it was the hardihood of
-spirit that led me to begin, the persistence of
-will that held me to my task, and the patience
-that was willing to begin again when the last
-stroke had failed. And so I found high
-moral uses in the bicycle and can commend
-it as a teacher without pulpit or creed. He
-who succeeds, or, to be more exact in handing
-over my experience, she who succeeds in
-gaining the mastery of such an animal as
-Gladys, will gain the mastery of life, and by
-exactly the same methods and characteristics.</p>
-
-<p>One of the first things I learned was that
-unless a forward impetus were given within
-well-defined intervals, away we went into the
-gutter, rider and steed. And I said to myself:
-“It is the same with all reforms: sometimes
-they seem to lag, then they barely
-balance, then they begin to oscillate as if
-they would lose the track and tumble to one
-side; but all they need is a new impetus at
-the right moment on the right angle, and
-<a name="png.035" id="png.035" href="#png.035"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>29<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>away they go again as merrily as if they had
-never threatened to stop at all.”</p>
-
-<div class="illo">
-<a name="png.034" id="png.034" href="#png.034"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>29a<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a><img id="castlescr" src="images/i034.jpg"
- alt="[Illustration: EASTNOR CASTLE.]" /><img
- id="castleprt" src="images/i034r.jpg"
- alt="[Illustration: EASTNOR CASTLE.]" width="0" height="0" /><br
- /><span class="ns">    [Illustration: </span>EASTNOR CASTLE.<span class="ns">]</span>
-</div>
-
-<p>On the Castle terrace we went through a
-long, narrow curve in a turret to seek a
-broader esplanade. As we approached it I
-felt wrought up in my mind, a little uncertain
-in my motions; and for that reason, on a
-small scale, my quick imagination put before
-me pictures of a “standing from under” on
-the part of the machine and damaging bruises
-against the pitiless walls. But with a little
-unobtrusive guiding by one who knew better
-than I how to do it we soon came out of the
-dim passage on to the broad, bright terrace
-we sought, and in an instant my fears were
-as much left behind as if I had not had them.
-So it will be, I think, I hope—nay, I believe—when,
-children that we are, we tremble on
-the brink and fear to launch away; but we
-shall find that death is only a bend in the
-river of life that sets the current heavenward.</p>
-
-<p>One afternoon, on the terrace at Eastnor
-Castle—the most delightful bicycle gallery I
-<a name="png.036" id="png.036" href="#png.036"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>30<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>have found anywhere—I fell to talking with
-a young companion about New-Year resolutions.
-It was just before Christmas, but the
-sky was of that moist blue that England only
-knows, and the earth almost steamy in the
-mild sunshine, while the soft outline of the
-famous Malvern Hills was restful as the little
-lake just at our feet, where swans were sailing
-or anchoring according to their fancy.</p>
-
-<p>One of us said: “I have already chosen
-my motto for 1894, and it is this, from a
-teacher who so often said to her pupils, when
-meeting them in corridor or recitation-room,
-‘I have heard something nice about you,’
-that it passed into a proverb in the school.
-Now I have determined that my mental attitude
-toward everybody shall be the same that
-these words indicate. The meaning is identical
-with that of the inscription on the fireplace
-in my den at home—‘Let something
-good be said.’ I remember mentioning to
-a literary friend that this was what I had
-chosen, and so far was he from perceiving
-<a name="png.037" id="png.037" href="#png.037"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>31<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>my intention that he sarcastically remarked,
-‘Are you then afraid that people will say
-dull things unless you set this rule before
-them?’ But my thought then was as it is
-now, that we should apply in our discussions
-of people and things the rule laid down by
-Coleridge, namely, ‘Look for the good in
-everything that you behold and every person,
-but do not decline to see the defects if
-they are there, and to refer to them.’”</p>
-
-<p>“That is an excellent motto,” brightly replied
-the other, “but if we followed it life
-would not be nearly so amusing as it is now.
-I have several friends whose rule is never to
-say any harm of anybody, and to my mind
-this cripples their development, for the tendency
-of such a method is to dull one’s powers
-of discrimination.”</p>
-
-<p>“But,” said the first speaker, “would not
-a medium course be better?—such a one,
-for instance, as my motto suggests. This
-would not involve keeping silence about the
-faults of persons and things, but would
-<a name="png.038" id="png.038" href="#png.038"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>32<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>develop that cheerful atmosphere which helps
-to smooth the rough edges of life, and at the
-same time does not destroy the critical faculty,
-because you are to tell the truth and the whole
-truth concerning those around you, whereas
-the common custom is to speak much of defects
-and little or not at all of merits.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes,” was the reply, “but it is not half
-so entertaining to speak of virtues as of faults,
-especially in this country; if you don’t criticize
-you can hardly talk at all, because the
-English dwell a great deal on what we in
-America call ‘the selvage side’ of things.”</p>
-
-<p>“Have you, then, noticed this as a national
-peculiarity after ten years of observation?”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes; and I have often heard it remarked,
-not only by our own countrymen, but by the
-people here.”</p>
-
-<p>“What do you think explains it?”</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I am inclined to apply the theory
-of M. Taine, the great French critic, to most
-of the circumstances of life, and I should say
-it was the climate; its uncertainty, its
-<a name="png.039" id="png.039" href="#png.039"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>33<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>constant changes, the heaviness of the atmosphere,
-the amount of fog, the real stress and
-strain to live that results from trying physical
-conditions added to the razor-sharp edge of
-business and social competition and the close
-contact that comes of packing forty millions
-of people of pronounced individuality on an
-island no bigger than the State of Georgia.
-To my mind the wonder is that they behave
-so well!”</p>
-
-<p>Once, when I grew somewhat discouraged
-and said that I had made no progress for a
-day or two, my teacher told me that it was
-just so when she learned: there were growing
-days and stationary days, and she had
-always noticed that just after one of these
-last dull, depressing, and dubious intervals
-she seemed to get an uplift and went ahead
-better than ever. It was like a spurt in rowing.
-This seems to be the law of progress
-in everything we do; it moves along a spiral
-rather than a perpendicular; we seem to be
-actually going out of the way, and yet it
-<a name="png.040" id="png.040" href="#png.040"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>34<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>turns out that we were really moving upward
-all the time.</p>
-
-<p>One day, when my most expert trainer
-twisted the truth a little that she might encourage
-me, I was reminded of an anecdote.</p>
-
-<p>In this practical age an illustration of the
-workings of truthfulness will often help a
-child more than any amount of exhortation
-concerning the theory thereof. For instance,
-a father in that level-headed part of the
-United States known as “out West” found
-that his little boy was falling into the habit of
-telling what was not true; so he said to him
-at the lunch-table, “Johnnie, I will come
-around with a horse and carriage at four
-o’clock to take you and mama for a drive this
-afternoon.” The boy was in high spirits,
-and watched for his father at the gate; but
-the hours passed by until six o’clock, when
-that worthy appeared walking up the street
-in the most unconcerned manner; and when
-Johnnie, full of indignation and astonishment,
-asked him why he did not come as he
-<a name="png.041" id="png.041" href="#png.041"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>35<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>had promised, the father said, “Oh, my boy,
-I just took it into my head that I would
-tell you a lie about the matter, just as you
-have begun telling lies to me.” The boy began
-to cry with mingled disappointment and
-shame to think his father would do a thing
-like that; whereupon the father took the little
-fellow on his knee and said: “This has all
-been done to show you what mischief comes
-from telling what is not true. It spoils everybody’s
-good time. If you cannot believe what
-I say and I cannot believe what you say, and
-nobody can believe what anybody says, then
-the world cannot go on at all; it would have
-to stop as the old eight-day clock did the
-other day, making us all late to dinner. It
-is only because, as a rule, we can believe in
-one another’s word that we are able to have
-homes, do business, and enjoy life. Whoever
-goes straight on telling the truth helps
-more by that than he could in any other one
-way to build up the world into a beautiful
-and happy place; and every time anybody
-<a name="png.042" id="png.042" href="#png.042"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>36<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>tells what is not true he helps to weaken
-everybody’s confidence in everybody else,
-and to spoil the good time, not of himself
-alone, but of all those about him.”</p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="section">
-<h3>MY TEACHERS</h3>
-
-<p>I studied my various kind teachers with
-much care. One was so helpful that but for
-my protest she would fairly have carried me
-in her arms, and the bicycle to boot, the whole
-distance. This was because she had not a
-scintilla of knowledge concerning the machine,
-and she did not wish me to come to grief
-through any lack on her part.</p>
-
-<p>Another was too timorous; the very twitter
-of her face, swiftly communicated to her
-arm and imparted to the quaking cross-bar,
-convulsed me with an inward fear; therefore,
-for her sake and mine, I speedily counted her
-out from the faculty in my bicycle college.</p>
-
-<div class="illo">
-<a name="png.043" id="png.043" href="#png.043"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>36a<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a><img id="easy" src="images/i043.jpg"
- alt="[Illustration: “SO EASY—WHEN YOU KNOW HOW.”]" /><br
- /><span class="ns">    [Illustration: </span>“SO EASY—WHEN YOU KNOW HOW.”<span class="ns">]</span>
-</div>
-
-<p>Another (and she, like most of my teachers,
-was a Londoner) was herself so capable, not to
-<a name="png.045" id="png.045" href="#png.045"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>37<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>say adventurous, and withal so solicitous for
-my best good, that she elicited my admiration
-by her ingenious mixture of cheering me on
-and holding me back; the latter, however,
-predominated, for she never relinquished her
-strong grasp on the cross-bar. She was a
-fine, brave character, somewhat inclined to a
-pessimistic view of life because of severe experience
-at home, which, coming to her at a
-pitifully early period, when brain and fancy
-were most impressionable, wrought an injustice
-to a nature large and generous—one
-which under happier skies would have blossomed
-out into a perfect flower of womanhood.
-My offhand thinkings aloud, to which
-I have always been greatly given, especially
-when in genial company, she seemed to “catch
-on the fly,” as a reporter impales an idea on
-his pencil-point. We had no end of what
-we thought to be good talk of things in
-heaven and earth and the waters under the
-earth; of the mystery that lies so closely
-round this cradle of a world, and all the
-<a name="png.046" id="png.046" href="#png.046"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>38<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>varied and ingenious ways of which the bicycle,
-so slow to give up its secret to a care-worn
-and inelastic pupil half a century old,
-was just then our whimsical and favorite
-symbol.</p>
-
-<p>We rejoiced together greatly in perceiving
-the impetus that this uncompromising but
-fascinating and inimitably capable machine
-would give to that blessed “woman question”
-to which we were both devoted; for
-we had earned our own bread many a year,
-and she, although more than twenty years
-my junior, had accumulated an amount of
-experience well-nigh as great, because she
-had lived in the world’s heart, or the world’s
-carbuncle (just as one chooses to regard what
-has been called in literary phrase the capital
-of humanity). We saw that the physical development
-of humanity’s mother-half would
-be wonderfully advanced by that universal
-introduction of the bicycle sure to come
-about within the next few years, because it
-is for the interest of great commercial
-<a name="png.047" id="png.047" href="#png.047"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>39<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>monopolies that this should be so, since if women
-patronize the wheel the number of buyers will
-be twice as large. If women ride they must,
-when riding, dress more rationally than they
-have been wont to do. If they do this many
-prejudices as to what they may be allowed to
-wear will melt away. Reason will gain upon
-precedent, and ere long the comfortable, sensible,
-and artistic wardrobe of the rider will
-make the conventional style of woman’s dress
-absurd to the eye and unendurable to the understanding.
-A reform often advances most
-rapidly by indirection. An ounce of practice
-is worth a ton of theory; and the graceful
-and becoming costume of woman on the bicycle
-will convince the world that has brushed
-aside the theories, no matter how well constructed,
-and the arguments, no matter how
-logical, of dress-reformers.</p>
-
-<p>A woman with bands hanging on her hips,
-and dress snug about the waist and chokingly
-tight at the throat, with heavily trimmed
-skirts dragging down the back and numerous
-<a name="png.048" id="png.048" href="#png.048"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>40<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>folds heating the lower part of the spine, and
-with tight shoes, ought to be in agony. She
-ought to be as miserable as a stalwart man
-would be in the same plight. And the fact
-that she can coolly and complacently assert
-that her clothing is perfectly easy, and that
-she does not want anything more comfortable
-or convenient, is the most conclusive proof
-that she is altogether abnormal bodily, and
-not a little so in mind.</p>
-
-<p>We saw with satisfaction the great advantage
-in good fellowship and mutual understanding
-between men and women who take
-the road together, sharing its hardships and
-rejoicing in the poetry of motion through
-landscapes breathing nature’s inexhaustible
-charm and skyscapes lifting the heart from
-what is to what shall be hereafter. We discoursed
-on the advantage to masculine character
-of comradeship with women who were
-as skilled and ingenious in the manipulation
-of the swift steed as they themselves. We
-contended that whatever diminishes the sense
-<a name="png.049" id="png.049" href="#png.049"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>41<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>of superiority in men makes them more manly,
-brotherly, and pleasant to have about; we
-felt sure that the bluff, the swagger, the bravado
-of young England in his teens would not
-outlive the complete mastery of the outdoor
-arts in which his sister is now successfully
-engaged. The old fables, myths, and follies
-associated with the idea of woman’s incompetence
-to handle bat and oar, bridle and rein,
-and at last the cross-bar of the bicycle, are
-passing into contempt in presence of the nimbleness,
-agility, and skill of “that boy’s sister”;
-indeed, we felt that if she continued to
-improve after the fashion of the last decade
-her physical achievements will be such that it
-will become the pride of many a ruddy youth
-to be known as “that girl’s brother.” As we
-discoursed of life, death, and the judgment to
-come, of “man’s inhumanity to man,” as well
-as to beasts, birds, and creeping things, we
-frequently recurred to a phrase that has become
-habitual with me in these later years
-when other worlds seem anchored close alongside
-<a name="png.050" id="png.050" href="#png.050"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>42<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>this, and when the telephone, the phonograph,
-and the microphone begin to show us
-that every breath carries in itself not only the
-power, but the scientific certainty of registration:
-“Well, one thing is certain: we shall
-meet it in the ether.”</p>
-
-<p>One of my companions in the tribulation
-of learning the bicycle, and the grace of its
-mastery, was a tall, bright-faced, vigorous-minded
-young Celt who is devoted to every
-good word and work and has had much experience
-with the “submerged tenth,” living
-among them and trying to build character
-among those waste places of humanity. I
-set out to teach this young woman the bicycle,
-and while she took her lesson—which,
-as she is young, elastic, and long-limbed,
-was vastly less difficult than mine—we talked
-of many things: American women, and why
-they do not walk; the English lower class,
-and why they are less vigorous than the
-Irish; the English girl of the slums, and why
-she is less self-respecting than an Irish girl in
-<a name="png.051" id="png.051" href="#png.051"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>43<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>the same station. “There are many things
-for which we cannot account,” said my young
-friend; whereupon, with the self-elected mentorship
-of my half-century, I oracularly observed:
-“Cosmos has not a consequence
-without a cause; it is the business of reason
-to seek for causes, and, if it cannot make
-sure of them, to construct for itself theories
-as to what they are or will turn out to be
-when found. But the trouble is, when we
-have framed our theory, we come to look
-upon it as our child, that we have brought
-into the world, nurtured, and trained up by
-hand. The curse of life is that men will
-insist on holding their theories as true and
-imposing them on others; this gives rise to
-creeds, customs, constitutions, royalties, governments.
-Happy is he who knows that he
-knows nothing, or next to nothing, and holds
-his opinions like a bouquet of flowers in his
-hand, that sheds its fragrance everywhere,
-and which he is willing to exchange at any
-moment for one fairer and more sweet,
-<a name="png.052" id="png.052" href="#png.052"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>44<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>instead of strapping them on like an armor of
-steel and thrusting with his lance those who
-do not accept his notions.”</p>
-
-<p>My last teacher was—as ought to be the
-case on the principle of climax—my best. I
-think she might have given many a pointer
-to folks that bring up children, and I realized
-that no matter how one may think himself
-accomplished, when he sets out to learn a
-new language, science, or the bicycle he has
-entered a new realm as truly as if he were a
-child newly born into the world, and “Except
-ye become as little children” is the law
-by which he is governed. Whether he will
-or not he must first creep, then walk, then
-run; and the wisest guide he can have is the
-one who most studiously helps him to help
-himself. This was a truism that I had heard
-all my life long, but never did a realizing sense
-of it settle down upon my spirit so thoroughly
-as when I learned the bicycle. It is not the
-teacher who holds you in place by main
-strength that is going to help you win that
-<a name="png.055" id="png.055" href="#png.055"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>45<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>elusive, reluctant, inevitable prize we call success,
-but it is the one who, while studiously
-keeping in the background, steers you to the
-fore. So No. 12 had the wit and wisdom to
-retire to the rear of the saucy steed, that I
-might form the habit of seeing no sign of aid
-or comfort from any source except my own
-reaction on the treadles according to law;
-yet cunningly contrived, by laying a skilled
-hand upon the saddle without my observation,
-knowledge, or consent, to aid me in my
-balancing. She diminished the weight thus
-set to my account as rapidly as my own increasing
-courage and skill rendered this possible.</p>
-
-<div class="illo">
-<p><a name="png.053" id="png.053" href="#png.053"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>44a<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a><img id="dogged" src="images/i053.jpg"
- alt="[Illustration: “IT’S DOGGED AS DOES IT.”]" /><br
- /><span class="ns">    [Illustration: </span>“IT’S DOGGED AS DOES IT.”<br
- /><small><cite>Yorkshire Proverb.</cite></small><span class="ns">]</span></p>
-</div>
-
-<p>I have always observed—and not without
-a certain pleasure, remembering my brother’s
-hardihood—that wherever a woman goes
-some man has reached the place before her;
-and it did not dim the verdure of my laurels
-or the fullness of my content when I had
-mastered Gladys to ascertain, from a letter
-sent me by the wife of a man sixty-four
-<a name="png.056" id="png.056" href="#png.056"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>46<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>years of age who had just learned, that I was
-“No. 2” instead of “No. 1,” thus obliging
-me to rectify the frontier of chronology as I
-had constructed it in relation to the conquest
-of the bicycle; for I vainly thought that I
-had fought the antics of Gladys as a sentry
-on duty away out on the extreme frontier of
-time.</p>
-
-<p>But at last (which means in two months or
-thereabouts, at ten or twenty minutes’ practice
-off and on daily) I reached the goal, and
-could mount the bicycle without the slightest
-foreign interference or even the moral support
-of a sympathetic onlooker. In doing
-this I realized that the totality of what I had
-learned entered into the action. Every added
-increment of power that I had gained in balancing,
-pedaling, steering, taking advantage
-of the surfaces, adjusting my weight according
-to my own peculiarities, and so on, was
-set to my account when I began to manage
-the bulky steed that behaves worst of all
-when a novice seeks the saddle and strikes
-<a name="png.057" id="png.057" href="#png.057"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>47<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>out alone. Just so, I felt, it had been all my
-life and will be, doubtless, in all worlds and
-with us all. The totality of native forces and
-acquired discipline and expert knowledge
-stands us in good stead for each crisis that
-we have to meet. There is a momentum, a
-cumulative power on which we can count in
-every new circumstance, as a capitalist counts
-upon his credit at the bank. It is not only a
-divine declaration, it is one of the basic laws
-of being, that “all things work <em>together</em> for
-good to them that love God”—that is, to
-them that are in love with God; and he who
-loves a law of God and makes himself obedient
-to that law has by that much loved
-God, only he does not always have the wit
-to know it.</p>
-
-<p>The one who has learned latest and yet
-has really learned the mastery of the bicycle
-is the best teacher. Many a time I have
-heard boys in college say that it was not the
-famed mathematician who could teach them
-anything—he knew too much, he was too
-<a name="png.058" id="png.058" href="#png.058"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>48<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>far ahead for them to hear his voice, he was
-impatient of their halting steps; but the tutor
-who had left college only the year before, and
-remembering his own failures and stupidity,
-had still that fellow-feeling that made him
-wondrous kind.</p>
-
-<p>As has been stated, my last epoch consisted
-of learning to mount; that is the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">pons asinorum</i>
-of the whole mathematical undertaking, for
-mathematical it is to a nicety. You have to
-balance your system more carefully than
-you ever did your accounts; not the smallest
-fraction can be out of the way, or away you
-go, the treacherous steed forming one half of
-an equation and yourself with a bruised knee
-forming the other. You must add a stroke
-at just the right angle to mount, subtract one
-to descend, divide them equally to hold your
-seat, and multiply all these movements in
-definite ratio and true proportion by the
-swiftest of all roots, or you will become the
-most minus of quantities. You must foot up
-your accounts with the strictest regularity;
-<a name="png.059" id="png.059" href="#png.059"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>49<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>there can be no partial payments in a business
-enterprise like this.</p>
-
-<p>Although I could now mount and descend,
-turn corners and get over the ground all by
-myself, I still felt a lack of complete faith in
-Gladys, although she had never harmed me
-but once, and then it was my own fault in
-letting go the gleaming cross-bar, which is
-equivalent to dropping the bridle of a spirited
-steed. Let it be carefully remembered by
-every “beginning” bicycler that, whatever
-she forgets, she must forever keep her “main
-hold,” else her horse is not bitted and will
-shy to a dead certainty.</p>
-
-<p>As we grew better acquainted I thought
-how perfectly analogous were our relations to
-those of friends who became slowly seasoned
-one to the other: they have endured the vicissitudes
-of every kind of climate, of the changing
-seasons; they have known the heavy,
-water-logged conditions of spring, the shrinkage
-of summer’s trying heat, the happy medium
-of autumn, and the contracting cold that
-<a name="png.060" id="png.060" href="#png.060"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>50<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>winter brings; they are like the bits of wood,
-exactly apportioned and attuned, that go to
-make up a Stradivarius violin. They can
-count upon one another and not disagree, because
-the stress of life has molded them to
-harmony. They are like the well-worn robe,
-the easy shoe. There is no short road to this
-adjustment, so much to be desired; not any
-will win it short of “patient continuance in
-well-doing.”</p>
-
-<p>I noticed that the great law which I believe
-to be potential throughout the universe made
-no exception here: “According to thy faith
-be it unto thee” was the only law of success.
-When I felt sure that I should do my pedaling
-with judicial accuracy, and did not permit
-myself to dread the swift motion round a
-bend; when I formed in my mind the image
-of a successful ascent of the “Priory Rise”;
-when I fully purposed in my mind that I
-should not run into the hedge on the one side
-or the iron fence on the other, these prophecies
-were fulfilled with practical certainty.
-<a name="png.061" id="png.061" href="#png.061"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>51<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>I fell into the habit of varying my experience
-by placing before myself the image—so germane
-to the work in which I am engaged—of
-an inebriate in action, and accompanied this
-mental panorama by an orchestral effect of
-my own producing: “They reel to and fro,
-and stagger like a drunken man;” but could
-never go through this three consecutive times
-without lurching off the saddle. But when I
-put before me, as distinctly as my powers of
-concentration would permit, the image of my
-mother holding steadily above me a pair of
-balances, and looking at me with that quizzical
-expectant glance I knew so well, and saying:
-“Do it? Of course you’ll do it; what else
-should you do?” I found that it was palpably
-helpful in enabling me to “sit straight
-and hold my own” on my uncertain steed.
-She always maintained, in the long talks we
-had concerning immortality, that the law I
-mention was conclusive, and was wont to close
-our conversations on that subject (in which I
-held the interrogative position) with some
-<a name="png.062" id="png.062" href="#png.062"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>52<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>such remark as this: “If Professor —— thinks
-he is not immortal he probably is not; if I
-think I am I may be sure I shall be, for is it
-not written in the law, ‘According to thy
-faith be it unto thee’?”</p>
-
-<p>Gradually I realized a consoling degree of
-mastery over Gladys; but nothing was more
-apparent to me than that we were not yet
-thoroughly acquainted—we had not summered
-and wintered together. I had not
-learned her kinks, and she was as full of
-them as the most spirited mare that sweeps
-the course on a Kentucky race-track. Although
-I have seen a race but once (and that
-was in the Champs Élysées, Paris, a quarter of
-a century ago), I am yet so much interested
-in the fact that it is a Flora Temple, a Goldsmith
-Maid, a Maud S., a Sunol, a California
-Maid that often stands first on the record, that
-I would fain have named my shying steed after
-one of these; but as she was a gift from Lady
-Henry Somerset this seemed invidious in me
-as a Yankee woman, and so I called her
-<a name="png.063" id="png.063" href="#png.063"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>53<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a><i>Gladys</i>, having in view the bright spirit of the
-donor, the exhilarating motion of the machine,
-and the gladdening effect of its acquaintance
-and use on my health and disposition.</p>
-
-<p>As I have said, I found from first to last that
-the process of acquisition exactly coincided
-with that which had given me everything I
-possessed of physical, mental, or moral success—that
-is, skill, knowledge, character. I
-was learning the bicycle precisely as I learned
-the a-b-c. When I set myself, as a stint,
-to mount and descend in regular succession
-anywhere from twenty to fifty times, it was
-on the principle that we do a thing more
-easily the second time than the first, the third
-time than the second, and so on in a rapidly
-increasing ratio, until it is done without any
-conscious effort whatever. This was precisely
-the way in which my mother trained me to
-tell the truth, and my music-teacher taught me
-that mastership of the piano keyboard which
-I have lost by disuse. Falling from grace
-may mean falling from a habit formed—how
-<a name="png.064" id="png.064" href="#png.064"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>54<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>do we know? This opens a boundless field
-of ethical speculation which I would gladly
-have followed, but just then the steel steed
-gave a lurch as if to say, “Tend to your
-knitting”—the favorite expression of a Rocky
-Mountain stage-driver when tourists taxed
-him with questions while he was turning
-round a bend two thousand feet above the
-valley.</p>
-
-<p>And now comes the question “What do the
-doctors say?” Here follow several testimonies:</p>
-
-<p>“The question now of great interest to girls
-is in regard to the healthfulness of the wheel.
-Many are prophesying dire results from this
-fascinating exercise, and fond parents are
-refusing to allow their daughters to ride because
-they are girls. It will be a delight to
-girls to learn that the fact of their sex is, in
-itself, not a bar to riding a wheel. If the
-girl is normally constituted and is dressed
-hygienically, and if she will use judgment
-and not overtax herself in learning to ride,
-<a name="png.065" id="png.065" href="#png.065"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>55<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>and in measuring the length of rides after she
-has learned, she is in no more danger from
-riding a wheel than is the young man. But
-if she persists in riding in a tight dress, and
-uses no judgment in deciding the amount of
-exercise she is capable of safely taking, it will
-be quite possible for her to injure herself, and
-then it is she, and not the wheel, that is to
-blame. Many physicians are now coming to
-regard the ‘wheel’ as beneficial to the health
-of women as well as of men.”</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Seneca Egbert says: “As an exercise
-bicycling is superior to most, if not all, others
-at our command. It takes one into the outdoor
-air; it is entirely under control; can be
-made gentle or vigorous as one desires; is
-active and not passive; takes the rider outside
-of himself and the thoughts and cares
-of his daily work; develops his will, his attention,
-his courage and independence, and
-makes pleasant what is otherwise most irksome.
-Moreover, the exercise is well and
-equally distributed over almost the whole
-<a name="png.066" id="png.066" href="#png.066"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>56<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>body, and, as Parker says, when all the muscles
-are exercised no muscle is likely to be
-over-exercised.”</p>
-
-<p>He advocates cycling as a remedy for dyspepsia,
-torpid liver, incipient consumption,
-nervous exhaustion, rheumatism, and melancholia.
-In regard to the exercise for women
-he says: “It gets them out of doors, gives
-them a form of exercise adapted to their
-needs, that they may enjoy in company with
-others or alone, and one that goes to the root
-of their nervous troubles.”</p>
-
-<p>He instances two cases, of girls fourteen
-and eighteen years of age, where a decided
-increase in height could be fairly attributed to
-cycling.</p>
-
-<div class="illo">
-<a name="png.068" id="png.068" href="#png.068"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>57a<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a><img id="standby" src="images/i068.jpg"
- alt="[Illustration: “LET GO—BUT STAND BY.”]" /><br
- /><span class="ns">    [Illustration: </span>“LET GO—BUT STAND BY.”<span class="ns">]</span>
-</div>
-
-<p>The question is often asked if riding a wheel
-is not the same as running a sewing-machine.
-Let the same doctor answer: “Not at all.
-Women, at least, sit erect on a wheel, and
-consequently the thighs never make even a
-right angle with the trunk, and there is no
-stasis of blood in the lower limbs and
-<a name="png.069" id="png.069" href="#png.069"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>57<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>genitalia. Moreover, the work itself makes the
-rider breathe in oceans of fresh air; while
-the woman at the sewing-machine works indoors,
-stoops over her work, contracting the
-chest and almost completely checking the
-flow of blood to and from the lower half of
-her body, where at the same time she is increasing
-the demand for it, finally aggravating
-the whole trouble by the pressure of the
-lower edge of the corset against the abdomen,
-so that the customary congestions and
-displacements have good cause for their existence.”</p>
-
-<p>“The great desideratum in all recreations
-is pure air, plenty of it, and lungs free to absorb
-it.” (Dr. Lyman B. Sperry.)</p>
-
-<p>“Let go, but stand by”—this is the golden
-rule for parent and pastor, teacher and friend;
-the only rule that at once respects the individuality
-of another and yet adds one’s own,
-so far as may be, to another’s momentum in
-the struggle of life.</p>
-
-<p>How difficult it is for the trainer to judge
-<a name="png.070" id="png.070" href="#png.070"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>58<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>exactly how much force to exercise in helping
-to steer the wheel and start the wheeler
-along the macadamized highway! In this
-the point of view makes all the difference.
-The trainer is tall, the rider short; the first
-can poise on the off-treadle while one foot
-is on the ground, but the last must learn to
-balance while one foot is in the air. For
-one of these perfectly to comprehend the
-other’s relation to the vehicle is practically
-impossible; the degree to which he may attain
-this depends upon the amount of imagination
-to the square inch with which he has
-been fitted out. The opacity of the mind,
-its inability to project itself into the realm of
-another’s personality, goes a long way to explain
-the friction of life. If we would set
-down other people’s errors to this rather than
-to malice prepense we should not only get
-more good out of life and feel more kindly
-toward our fellows, but doubtless the rectitude
-of our intellects would increase, and the
-justice of our judgments. For instance, it is
-<a name="png.071" id="png.071" href="#png.071"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>59<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>my purpose, so far as I understand myself, to
-be considerate toward those about me; but
-my pursuits have been almost purely mental,
-and to perceive what would seem just to one
-whose pursuits have been almost purely mechanical
-would require an act of imagination
-of which I am wholly incapable. We are so
-shut away from one another that none tells
-those about him what he considers ideal
-treatment on their part toward him. He
-thinks about it all the same, mumbles about
-it to himself, mutters about it to those of his
-own guild, and these mutterings make the
-discontent that finally breaks out in reforms
-whose tendency is to distribute the good
-things of this life more equally among the
-living. But nothing will probe to the core
-of this the greatest disadvantage under which
-we labor—that is, mutual non-comprehension—except
-a basis of society and government
-which would make it easy for each to
-put himself in another’s place because his
-place is so much like another’s. We shall be
-<a name="png.072" id="png.072" href="#png.072"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>60<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>less imaginative, perhaps, in those days—the
-critics say this is inevitable; but it will only
-be because we need less imagination in order
-to do that which is just and kind to every
-one about us.</p>
-
-<p>In my early home my father always set us
-children to work by stints—that is, he measured
-off a certain part of the garden to be
-weeded, or other work to be done, and when
-we had accomplished it our working-hours
-were over. With this deeply ingrained habit
-in full force I set myself stints with the bicycle.
-In the later part of my novitiate fifty attempts
-a day were allotted to that most difficult of all
-achievements, learning to mount, and I calculate
-that five hundred such efforts well
-put in will solve that most intricate problem
-of specific gravity.</p>
-
-<p>Now concerning falls: I set out with the
-determination not to have any. Though
-mentally adventurous I have always been
-physically cautious; a student of physiology
-in my youth, I knew the reason why I
-<a name="png.073" id="png.073" href="#png.073"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>61<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>brought so much less elasticity to my task
-than did my young and agile trainers. I
-knew the penalty of broken bones, for these
-a tricycle had cost me some years before.
-My trainers were kind enough to encourage
-me by saying that if I became an expert in
-slow riding I should take the rapid wheel as
-a matter of course and thus be really more
-accomplished (in the long run as well as the
-short) than by any other process. So I have
-had but one real downfall to record as the
-result of my three months’ practice, and it
-illustrates the old saying that “pride goeth
-before destruction, and a haughty spirit before
-a fall”; for I was not a little lifted up by
-having learned to dismount with confidence
-and ease—I will not say with grace, for at
-fifty-three that would be an affectation—so
-one bright morning I bowled on down the
-Priory drive waving my hand to my most
-adventurous aide-de-camp, and calling out
-as I left her behind, “Now you will see
-how nicely I can do it—watch!” when
-<a name="png.074" id="png.074" href="#png.074"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>62<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>behold! that timid left foot turned traitor, and
-I came down solidly on my knee, and the
-knee on a pebble as relentless as prejudice
-and as opinionated as ignorance. The nervous
-shock made me well-nigh faint, the bicycle
-tumbled over on my prone figure, and
-I wished I had never heard of Gladys or of
-any wheel save</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div>“Fly swiftly round, ye wheels of time,</div>
-<div> And bring the welcome day—”</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="noindent">of my release into the ether.</p>
-
-<p>Let me remark to any young woman who
-reads this page that for her to tumble off her
-bike is inexcusable. The lightsome elasticity
-of every muscle, the quickness of the eye, the
-agility of motion, ought to preserve her from
-such a catastrophe. I have had no more falls
-simply because I would not. I have proceeded
-on a basis of the utmost caution, and
-aside from that one pitiful performance the
-bicycle has cost me hardly a single bruise.</p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="section">
-<h3 title="AN ETHEREAL EPISODE"><a name="png.075" id="png.075" href="#png.075"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>63<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a>AN ETHEREAL EPISODE</h3>
-
-
-<p>They that know nothing fear nothing.
-Away back in 1886 my alert young friend,
-Miss Anna Gordon, and my ingenious young
-niece, Miss Katharine Willard, took to the
-tricycle as naturally as ducks take to water.
-The very first time they mounted they went
-spinning down the long shady street, with its
-pleasant elms, in front of Rest Cottage, where
-for nearly a generation mother and I had had
-our home. Even as the war-horse snuffeth
-the battle from afar, I longed to go and do likewise.
-Remembering my country bringing-up
-and various exploits in running, climbing,
-horseback-riding, to say nothing of my tame
-heifer that I trained for a Bucephalus, I said
-to myself, “If those girls can ride without
-learning so can I!” Taking out my watch
-I timed them as they, at my suggestion, set
-out to make a record in going round the
-square. Two and a half minutes was the result.
-I then started with all my forces well
-<a name="png.076" id="png.076" href="#png.076"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>64<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>in hand, and flew around in two and a quarter
-minutes. Not contented with this, but puffed
-up with foolish vanity, I declared that I would
-go around in two minutes; and, encouraged
-by their cheers, away I went without a fear
-till the third turning-post was reached, when
-the left hand played me false, and turning at
-an acute angle, away I went sidelong, machine
-and all, into the gutter, falling on my
-right elbow, which felt like a glassful of
-chopped ice, and I knew that for the first
-time in a life full of vicissitudes I had been
-really hurt. Anna Gordon’s white face as
-she ran toward me caused me to wave my
-uninjured hand and call out, “Never mind!”
-and with her help I rose and walked into the
-house, wishing above all things to go straight
-to my own room and lie on my own bed,
-and thinking as I did so how pathetic is that
-instinct that makes “the stricken deer go
-weep,” the harmed hare seek the covert.</p>
-
-<p>Two physicians were soon at my side, and
-my mother, then over eighty years of age,
-<a name="png.077" id="png.077" href="#png.077"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>65<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>came in with much controlled agitation and
-seated herself beside my bed, taking my hand
-and saying, “O Frank! you were always too
-adventurous.”</p>
-
-<p>Our family physician was out of town, and
-the two gentlemen were well-nigh strangers.
-It was a kind face, that of the tall, thin man
-who looked down upon me in my humiliation,
-put his ear against my heart to see if
-there would be any harm in administering
-ether, handled my elbow with a woman’s
-gentleness, and then said to his assistant,
-“Now let us begin.” And to me who had
-been always well, and knew nothing of such
-unnatural proceedings, he remarked, “Breathe
-into the funnel—full, natural breaths; that is
-all you have to do.”</p>
-
-<p>I set myself to my task, as has been my
-wont always, and soon my mother and my
-friend, Anna Gordon, who were fanning me
-with big “palm-leaves,” became grotesque
-and then ridiculous, and I remember saying
-(or at least I remember that I once
-<a name="png.078" id="png.078" href="#png.078"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>66<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>remembered), “You are a couple of enormous crickets
-standing on your hind legs, and you have
-each a spear of dry grass, and you look as
-if you were paralyzed; and you wave your
-withered spears of grass, and you call that
-fanning a poor woman who is suffocating
-before your eyes.” I labored with them, entreated
-them, and dealt with them in great
-plainness—so much so that my mother could
-not bear to hear me talk in such a foolish
-fashion, and quietly withdrew to her own
-room, closed the door, and sat down to possess
-her soul in patience until the operation
-should be over.</p>
-
-<p>Then the scene changed, and as they put
-on the splints pain was involved, and I heard
-those about me laughing in the most unfeeling
-manner while I murmured: “She always
-believed in humanity—she always said she
-did and would; and she has lived in this town
-thirty years, and they are hurting her—they
-are hurting her dreadfully; and if they keep
-on she will lose her faith in human nature,
-<a name="png.079" id="png.079" href="#png.079"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>67<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>and if she should it will be the greatest calamity
-that can happen to a human being.”</p>
-
-<p>Now the scene changed once more—I was
-in the starry heavens, and said to the young
-friends who had come in and stood beside
-me: “Here are stars as thick as apples on a
-bough, and if you are good you shall each
-have one. And, Anna, because you <em>are</em>
-good, and always have been, you shall be
-given a whole solar system to manage just as
-you like. The Heavenly Father has no end
-of them; He tosses them out of His hand as
-a boy does marbles; He spins them like a
-cocoon; He has just as many after He has
-given them away as He had before He
-began.”</p>
-
-<p>Then there settled down upon me the
-most vivid and pervading sense of the love
-of God that I have ever known. I can give
-no adequate conception of it, and what I said,
-as my comrades repeated it to me, was something
-after this order:</p>
-
-<p>“We are like blood-drops floating through
-<a name="png.080" id="png.080" href="#png.080"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>68<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>the great heart of our Heavenly Father. We
-are infinitely safe, and cared for as tenderly
-as a baby in its mother’s arms. No harm
-can come anywhere near us; what we call
-harm will turn out to be the very best and
-kindest way of leading us to be our best
-selves. There is no terror in the universe,
-for God is always at the center of everything.
-He is love, as we read in the good book, and
-He has but one wish—that we should love
-one another; in Him we live, and move, and
-have our being.”</p>
-
-<p>Little by little, freeing my mind of all sorts
-of queer notions, I came back out of the
-only experience of the kind that I have ever
-known; but I must say that had I not learned
-the great evils that result from using anesthetics
-I should have wished to try ether
-again, just for the ethical and spiritual help
-that came to me. It let me out into a new
-world, greater, more mellow, more godlike,
-and it did me no harm at all.</p>
-
-<p>During the time my arm was in a sling I
-<a name="png.081" id="png.081" href="#png.081"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>69<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>“sat about”—something not easy to do for
-one of active mind and life. I learned to
-write with my left hand—for this was before
-the happy days of the many stenographers—and
-my hieroglyphics went out to all the
-leading temperance women of this country.
-One morning the bell, distant and musical,
-tolled in the steeple of the university. We
-knew it meant that General Grant was dead,
-for the newspapers and despatches of the
-previous evening had prepared us. Somehow
-a deep chord in my soul vibrated to the
-tone of the bell—a chord of patriotism—and I
-went away to the vine-covered piazza, where
-I was wont to sit, and in twenty minutes
-(which fact is my apology for their limping
-feet) wrote out my heart in the following lines.
-They had at least the merit of sincere devotion,
-and were telephoned to Chicago, eleven
-miles away, by Anna Gordon, and appearing
-in the daily <cite>Inter-Ocean</cite> were read at their
-breakfast-tables by many other patriots next
-morning. I do not know when anything has
-<a name="png.082" id="png.082" href="#png.082"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>70<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>given me more real pleasure than to be told
-that a stalwart soldier belonging to the Grand
-Army of the Republic read my crude but
-heartfelt lines aloud to his wife and daughter,
-and at the close brushed away a manly tear.</p>
-
-
-<h3>GRANT IS DEAD.</h3>
-
-<div class="poetry-container" id="Grant">
-<p><i>On Hearing the University Bell at Evanston, Ill., Toll for<br
- />the Death of General Grant at Nine O’clock A.M.,<br
- />July 23, 1885.</i></p>
-
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Toll, bells, from every steeple,</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Tell the sorrow of the people;</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Moan, sullen guns, and sigh</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>For the greatest who could die.</div>
-<div class="i4"><span class="ns">              </span>Grant is dead.</div>
-<span class="ns"><br
- /></span></div><!-- stanza -->
-
-<div class="stanza">
-<div>Never so firm were set those moveless lips as now,</div>
-<div>Never so dauntless shone that massive brow;</div>
-<div>The silent man has passed into the silent tomb.</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Ring out our grief, sweet bell,</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>The people’s sorrow tell</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>For the greatest who could die.</div>
-<div class="i4"><span class="ns">              </span>Grant is dead.</div>
-<span class="ns"><br
- /></span></div><!-- stanza -->
-</div><div class="poetry"><!-- required to permit page breaking -->
-<div class="stanza">
-<div>“Let us have peace!” Great heart,</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>That peace has come to thee;</div>
-<div>Thy sword for freedom wrought,</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>And now thy soul is free,</div>
-<div>While a rescued nation stands</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Mourning its fallen chief—</div>
-<div>The Southern with the Northern lands,<a name="png.083" id="png.083" href="#png.083"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>71<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a></div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Akin in honest grief.</div>
-<div>The hands of black and white</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Shall clasp above thy grave,</div>
-<div>Children of the Republic all,</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>No master and no slave.</div>
-<div>Almost “all summer on this line”</div>
-<div>Thou steadily didst “fight it out”;</div>
-<div>But Death, the silent,</div>
-<div>Matched at last our silent chief,</div>
-<div>And put to rout his brave defense.</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Moan, sullen guns, and sigh</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>For the bravest who could die.</div>
-<div class="i4"><span class="ns">              </span>Grant is dead.</div>
-<span class="ns"><br
- /></span></div><!-- stanza -->
-</div><div class="poetry"><!-- required to permit page breaking -->
-<div class="stanza">
-<div>The huge world holds to-day</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>No fame so great, so wide,</div>
-<div>As his whose steady eyes grew dim</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>On Mount McGregor’s side</div>
-<div>Only an hour ago, and yet</div>
-<div>The whole great world has learned</div>
-<div class="i4"><span class="ns">              </span>That Grant is dead.</div>
-<span class="ns"><br
- /></span></div><!-- stanza -->
-
-<div class="stanza">
-<div>O heart of Christ! what joy</div>
-<div>Brings earth’s new brotherhood!</div>
-<div>All lands as one,</div>
-<div>Buckner, Grant’s bed beside,</div>
-<div>The priest and Protestant in converse kind;</div>
-<div>Prayers from all hearts, and Grant</div>
-<div>Praying “we all might meet in better worlds.”</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Toll, bells, from every steeple,</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Tell the sorrow of the people;</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>So true in life, so calm and strong,</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Bravest of all, in death suffering so long</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>And without one complaint!<a name="png.084" id="png.084" href="#png.084"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>72<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a></div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Moan, sullen guns, and sigh</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>For the greatest who could die;</div>
-<div class="i1"><span class="ns">    </span>Salute the nation’s head.</div>
-<div class="i4"><span class="ns">              </span>Our Grant is dead.</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="section">
-
-<div class="illo">
-<a name="png.085" id="png.085" href="#png.085"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>72a<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a><img id="atlast" src="images/i085.jpg"
- alt="[Illustration: “AT LAST.”]" /><br
- /><span class="ns">    [Illustration: </span>“AT LAST.”<span class="ns">]</span>
-</div>
-
-<h3>IN CONCLUSION</h3>
-
-<p>If I am asked to explain why I learned the
-bicycle I should say I did it as an act of grace,
-if not of actual religion. The cardinal doctrine
-laid down by my physician was, “Live out of
-doors and take congenial exercise;” but from
-the day when, at sixteen years of age, I was
-enwrapped in the long skirts that impeded
-every footstep, I have detested walking and
-felt with a certain noble disdain that the conventions
-of life had cut me off from what in
-the freedom of my prairie home had been
-one of life’s sweetest joys. Driving is not
-real exercise; it does not renovate the river
-of blood that flows so sluggishly in the veins
-of those who from any cause have lost the
-natural adjustment of brain to brawn. Horseback-riding,
-which does promise vigorous exercise,
-is expensive. The bicycle meets all
-<a name="png.087" id="png.087" href="#png.087"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>73<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>the conditions and will ere long come within
-the reach of all. Therefore, in obedience to
-the laws of health, I learned to ride. I also
-wanted to help women to a wider world, for
-I hold that the more interests women and
-men can have in common, in thought, word,
-and deed, the happier will it be for the home.
-Besides, there was a special value to women in
-the conquest of the bicycle by a woman in
-her fifty-third year, and one who had so many
-comrades in the white-ribbon army that her
-action would be widely influential. Then
-there were three minor reasons:</p>
-
-<p>I did it from pure natural love of adventure—a
-love long hampered and impeded, like
-a brook that runs underground, but in this
-enterprise bubbling up again with somewhat
-of its pristine freshness and taking its merry
-course as of old.</p>
-
-<p>Second, from a love of acquiring this new
-implement of power and literally putting it
-underfoot.</p>
-
-<p>Last, but not least, because a good many
-people thought I could not do it at my age.</p>
-
-<p><a name="png.088" id="png.088" href="#png.088"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>74<span class="ns">]<br
- /></span></span></a>It is needless to say that a bicycling costume
-was a prerequisite. This consisted of
-a skirt and blouse of tweed, with belt, rolling
-collar, and loose cravat, the skirt three inches
-from the ground; a round straw hat, and
-walking-shoes with gaiters. It was a simple,
-modest suit, to which no person of common
-sense could take exception.</p>
-
-<p>As nearly as I can make out, reducing the
-problem to actual figures, it took me about
-three months, with an average of fifteen minutes’
-practice daily, to learn, first, to pedal;
-second, to turn; third, to dismount; and
-fourth, to mount independently this most
-mysterious animal. January 20th will always
-be a red-letter bicycle day, because although
-I had already mounted several times with no
-hand on the rudder, some good friend had
-always stood by to lend moral support; but
-summoning all my force, and, most forcible
-of all, what Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson
-declares to be the two essential elements—decision
-and precision—I mounted and started
-<a name="png.089" id="png.089" href="#png.089"><span class="pagenum"><span
- class="ns">[</span>75<span class="ns">]
- </span></span></a>off alone. From that hour the spell was
-broken; Gladys was no more a mystery: I
-had learned all her kinks, had put a bridle in
-her teeth, and touched her smartly with the
-whip of victory. Consider, ye who are of a
-considerable chronology: in about thirteen
-hundred minutes, or, to put it more mildly,
-in twenty-two hours, or, to put it most mildly
-of all, in less than a single day as the almanac
-reckons time—but practically in two days of
-actual practice—amid the delightful surroundings
-of the great outdoors, and inspired
-by the bird-songs, the color and fragrance of
-an English posy-garden, in the company of
-devoted and pleasant comrades, I had made
-myself master of the most remarkable, ingenious,
-and inspiring motor ever yet devised
-upon this planet.</p>
-
-<p>Moral: <em>Go thou and do likewise!</em></p>
-
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="tnote">
-<h2>Transcriber’s Note</h2>
-
-
-<p>Inconsistent hyphenation (horseback-riding/horseback riding) has been
-retained as printed.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-
-
-<hr class="ww" />
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's A Wheel Within a Wheel, by Frances E. Willard
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