“With pleasure,” I said.
I examined the lines on her lily hand, and gave her a fortune that I thought was sure to please her, even throwing in the tall dark woman that was to cause some little trouble, all in true gipsy fashion.
“Now,” she said, “can you tell Letty’s character and mine?”
“I have invented a new science,” I replied, “and I call it ‘Bikeology.’ Show me your bike and I’ll read you your character.”
But it was a dusty day and neither she nor Letty would.
Who Should Ride the Bicycle?
Well, there is a lady up north ninety years old who rides nimbly enough, and plenty of girls of nine ride. But only yesterday I saw a little tot of not over five mounted on a miniature machine. It is all downhill with the old lady, but to let a mere infant ride is the greatest of cruelty. It may bandy her legs and deform her in ways worse than that. Really, no child should be allowed to mount till eight or ten.
All else who are in fairly good form may ride—nay, but ought to ride. I’d like the whole of Great Britain on wheels, and a beautiful cinder path to stretch all the way ’twixt London and Edinburgh. Ten miles might be laid down first on trial, and no doubt it would pay. No racing should be allowed on this splendid road of mine; the pace should be regulated; a fee charged, and cosy little inns erected here and there along the course where one could dismount for light refreshment; but—I fear the world is hardly old enough yet for such a dream. “The Anglo-Caledonian Cinder Course Company.” It sounds well, doesn’t it?
Remediable Ailments.
The ailments which judicious cycling can either banish entirely or assist in curing are many and varied. I wish to head the list with chronic rheumatism, because but for the cycle I should not be writing in my wigwam at this moment, nor able to get up at five on a dark snowy winter’s morning and plunge into the coldest of baths. In the preface to one of my books on the wheel, I mention that, “after nine years of hard sea-service in the Royal Navy, including months in an Indian hospital suffering from acute rheumatism, I was a second time struck down with the disease in a chronic form, and left Haslar (invalided on half-pay) tottering painfully on a stick.” This is only a portion of the truth, for I was weak all over. Soon, however, I took to gentle exercise on the cycle. In six months I was as strong as ever, and have never had a return of my old enemy.