ry hemlocks. The world seemed very large, significant,
and delightful; and we had it all to ourselves, as we sat there side by
side, my bicycle and I.

'Tis conceited, perhaps, to imagine myself an item in the musings of my
silent companion, though I would fain be a pleasant one. But this much
is certain, that, among general praising of life and of things, my own
thoughts fell to framing the praises of bicycles. They were deeply felt,
and as such not without appearance of paradox. What an excellent thing,
I reflected, it is that a bicycle is satisfied to be quiet, and is not
in the way when one is off it! Now, my friends out there, on their great
horses, as Herbert of Cherbury calls them, are undoubtedly enjoying many
and various pleasures; but they miss this pleasure of resting quietly on
the grass with their steeds sitting calmly beside them. They are busy
riding, moreover, and have to watch, to curb or humour the fancies of
their beasts, instead of indulging their own fancy; let alone the
necessity of keeping up a certain prestige. They are, in reality,
domineered over by these horses, and these horses' standard of living,
as fortunate people are dominated by their servants, their clothes, and
their family connections; much as Merovingian kings, we were taught in
our "Cours de Dictees," were dominated by the mayors of the palace.
Instead of which, bar accidents (and the malignity of bottle-glass and
shoe-nails), I am free, and am helped to ever greater freedom by my
bicycle.

These thoughts came to me while sitting there on the grass slopes,
rather than while speeding along the solitary road which snakes across
them to the mountains, because the great gift of the bicycle consists to
my mind in something apart from mere rapid locomotion; so much so,
indeed, that those persons forego it, who scorch along for mere
exercise, or to get from place to place, or to read the record of miles
on their cyclometer. There is an unlucky tendency--like the tendency to
litter on the part of inanimates and to dulness on that of our
fellow-creatures--to allow every new invention to add to life's
complications, and every new power to increase life's hustling; so that,
unless we can dominate the mischief, we are really the worse off instead
of the better. It is so much easier, apparently, to repeat the spell
(once the magician has spoken it) which causes the broomstick to fetch
water from the well, as in Goethe's ballad, than to remembe