cost, and felt as much lightened as Christian
in the Pilgrim's Progress when his
burden left him. After this I hired.
Horse-exercise was still said to be essential,
and I hired. It cost me money, and it
gave me pain. I suppose no man ever
acquired such a curious experience of equine
eccentricity in a short time. Brutes, which
carried every one else "as if they were in
their cradles," according to the job-master,
always jibbed, or reared, or shied, or bolted,
or kicked, when I was on their backs. I
have been knelt down with in Oxford-
street; I have ambled sideways up the
Strand; I have been the unwilling terror
of the Park; I was the scorn of cabmen,
and the delight of roughs—and still
I rode. I was the wild huntsman of the
German story, only, instead of being
chased by a spectre, I was hunted down
by a liver. Now and again I had gleams
of enjoyment, sweet but transient, when I
was taken charge of by equestrian friends,
who gave me a quiet mount, and took me
with them; but the rule was solitary
wretchedness and abject terror.

I was on the point of saying with the
Northern farmer, "Gin oi mun doy, oi
mun doy;" but this state of horror must
not, shall not, last, for I'll give up the
horse-torture at all risks—when the bicycle
came to be talked of in England. Desperate
men seek desperate remedies. I made
inquiries as to the power of this fantastic
machine: not as to how much could be got
out of it—that every dealer and every
expert were forward enough in telling me
—but how much it would take out of
me. Would it work my muscles, open
my pores, stimulate my digestion, and
defeat my liver? Might I, if I devoted
myself to practice, hope at the end of a
given term to substitute it for the dreadful
horse?

There were not many velocipede schools
open in London when these hopes and
doubts possessed me. I made my way to
one I had read of in Old-street, St. Luke's;
feeling that I was adventurous, if not
imprudent. For I had determined to try a
mount, come what would. Anything is
better than the hideous equine bondage I
am groaning under, I soliloquised; and
as what man has done man may do, why
should not perseverance and assiduity
enable me to take my exercise on two
wheels, like the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, or the men in the Champs Elysées
whom I saw last Easter? I purposely
ignored my figure and my years, and asked
the director of the riding-school quite
jauntily how soon he would undertake to
turn me out proficient? He was a very
different man to my other riding-master,
Corporal Bump. A bicycle student himself,
he explained the extreme simplicity of
the accomplishment, and showed me how
easily it could be acquired, in a way which
carried conviction: for he pointed to himself
and to the gentlemen at work all round
us, in constant corroboration of what he
said.

There were men who were having their
first lesson, and who were being held on
by stout attendants, who puffed and blew in
the intervals of giving instructions; there
were others who careered gallantly round
the arena, darting in and out among the
learners, like swallows skimming the surface
of a pond; others, again, who, there's no
denying, had many tumbles, and ran
frequently against walls. Altogether, there were
eleven pupils at their studies, and I speedily
made a twelfth. I had arranged to have
"the rough edge taken off me" by one of
the attendants; after which the athletic
proprietor would himself take me in hand,
promising to turn me out fit to ride into
the country on a bicycle in three weeks
from that time. It seemed too good to be
true, and as soon as I had my attendant
out of earshot of his master, I asked him
his opinion too, and if by extra care I
could avoid the bangs and bumps there
and then being undergone by the men
who fell? That a month would do it at
the outside, and that those gentlemen only
tumbled about because they liked it, or
were obstinate, he didn't know which
it was, was my rudimentary teacher's
cheering reply. "Thought themselves so
clever that they would try to do without a
man long before they were fit for it, and
that's the cause of all the accidents I've
heard of; but as for you, sir, if you only
won't be in too much of a hurry, you'll
learn it without a single fall."

His word was kept. I went for half an
hour three days a week for three weeks,
was supported round the school by the
stout arm of my teacher, moved slowly
round alone, learnt to use the brake, and to
move swiftly, before I made my first attempt
out of doors. There were a few aches and
a little stiffness, some groundless fright as
to internal injury after fatigue, but no
tumbles and no misadventure of any kind.
At my seventh lesson I was fortunate
enough to enlist the attention of a
disinterested friend, who made the rest of