"Sure," answered Pat, "if you're willing to take the watch in part payment."
[A FEW DON'TS FOR BICYCLE BEGINNERS.]
I.—Don't pay any attention to people who tell you that the best bicycle path for beginners can be made out of fifty or sixty mattresses set end to end and running in a circle. It may be pleasanter, when taking a header, to land on a mattress than on a macadamized road, but it is a curious fact in bicycling that the softest road is the hardest to ride on.
II.—Don't try to make a century run within two days of your first lesson. If, however, you are too ambitious to follow this rule, purchase a high-gear cyclometer which will register a mile for every ten feet you travel. And, speaking of cyclometers, don't forget that people who call them cycloramas are apt to be set down as wanting in intelligence.
III.—Don't think, if you are learning to ride on the sea-shore, that because your wheels have rubber tires on they won't get wet if the waves dash up over them. The worst mistake any one ever made in bicycling was that of the small boy who thought the rubber tires were put on the wheels to keep them dry, just as rubber overshoes were put on his feet to keep them from getting wet.
IV.—Don't try coasting down joggly hills. Get out of your father's library the copy of Dr. Holmes's poem which tells of the wonderful "one-hoss shay," which suddenly went completely to pieces one day. What has happened to a one-horse chaise might very easily happen to a bicycle, particularly on a joggly hill. Nothing will loosen bolts and screws more quickly than joggles, and if it should happen some morning that while you were coasting down a hill full of thank-you-marms your wheel should suddenly come apart in every bolt and bar, you would go sailing through the air like a cannon-ball just from the cannon's mouth, and alighting finally on the ground, while not at all difficult, might prove painful. Be careful, then, to keep your feet on the pedals while going down a hill of this character.
V.—Don't try fancy riding until you have studied the art of bicycling for at least a week. One young man who ignored this rule, and tried to ride his wheel side-saddle-wise at the end of his third lesson, left a goodly half of his left ear on the road-side as a result, while a small youth of our acquaintance, who tried to ride backwards on the afternoon of his fourth day of study, got into a dispute with a picket-fence, which tore his clothes, and made the back of his neck look as if seven hundred mosquitoes had lunched there.
VI.—Don't be absent-minded when riding. One of the rules of good playing in the game of golf is, "keep your eye on the ball." An equally good rule in riding your wheel is, "keep your mind on the wheel." The writer of these hints, while riding in the mountains during his first year of wheeling, got thinking of something else, and the first thing he knew, instead of being out wheeling, he was in swimming in a very cold and wet mountain lake.
VII.—Don't forget the rule of the road. This is a very old rule, but it cannot be too often repeated. Not more than two weeks ago the writer saw a young woman out riding on her wheel who had forgotten the rule of the road, and she was met by another young woman who was absent-minded in violation of our rule numbered six. They met very forcibly, and the result was that both of them not only had to buy new wheels, but the spring bonnets of both of them were irretrievably ruined.