ied down to the hospital, and
found the Expert doing pretty fairly. In a few more days I was quite
sound. I attribute this to my prudence in always dismounting on
something soft. Some recommend a feather bed, but I think an Expert is
better.

The Expert got out at last, brought four assistants with him. It was a
good idea. These four held the graceful cobweb upright while I climbed
into the saddle; then they formed in column and marched on either
side of me while the Expert pushed behind; all hands assisted at the
dismount.

The bicycle had what is called the "wabbles," and had them very badly.
In order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me,
and in every instance the thing required was against nature. That is
to say, that whatever the needed thing might be, my nature, habit, and
breeding moved me to attempt it in one way, while some immutable and
unsuspected law of physics required that it be done in just the other
way. I perceived by this how radically and grotesquely wrong had been
the life-long education of my body and members. They were steeped in
ignorance; they knew nothing--nothing which it could profit them to
know. For instance, if I found myself falling to the right, I put the
tiller hard down the other way, by a quite natural impulse, and so
violated a law, and kept on going down. The law required the opposite
thing--the big wheel must be turned in the direction in which you are
falling. It is hard to believe this, when you are told it. And not
merely hard to believe it, but impossible; it is opposed to all your
notions. And it is just as hard to do it, after you do come to believe
it. Believing it, and knowing by the most convincing proof that it is
true, does not help it: you can't any more DO it than you could before;
you can neither force nor persuade yourself to do it at first. The
intellect has to come to the front, now. It has to teach the limbs to
discard their old education and adopt the new.

The steps of one's progress are distinctly marked. At the end of each
lesson he knows he has acquired something, and he also knows what that
something is, and likewise that it will stay with him. It is not like
studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for
thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring
the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No--and I see now, plainly
enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you