I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went down
and bought a barrel of Pond’s Extract and a bicycle. The Expert came
home with me to instruct me. We chose the back yard, for the sake of
privacy, and went to work.
Mine was not a full-grown bicycle, but only a colt—a fifty-inch, with
the pedals shortened up to forty-eight—and skittish, like any other
colt. The Expert explained the thing’s points briefly, then he got on
its back and rode around a little, to show me how easy it was to do. He
said that the dismounting was perhaps the hardest thing to learn, and
so we would leave that to the last. But he was in error there. He
found, to his surprise and joy, that all that he needed to do was to
get me on to the machine and stand out of the way; I could get off,
myself. Although I was wholly inexperienced, I dismounted in the best
time on record. He was on that side, shoving up the machine; we all
came down with a crash, he at the bottom, I next, and the machine on
top.
We examined the machine, but it was not in the least injured. This was
hardly believable. Yet the Expert assured me that it was true; in fact,
the examination proved it. I was partly to realize, then, how admirably
these things are constructed. We applied some Pond’s Extract, and
resumed. The Expert got on the _other _side to shove up this time, but
I dismounted on that side; so the result was as before.
The machine was not hurt. We oiled ourselves up again, and resumed.
This time the Expert took up a sheltered position behind, but somehow
or other we landed on him again.
He was full of surprised admiration; said it was abnormal. She was all
right, not a scratch on her, not a timber started anywhere. I said it
was wonderful, while we were greasing up, but he said that when I came
to know these steel spider-webs I would realize that nothing but
dynamite could cripple them. Then he limped out to position, and we
resumed once more. This time the Expert took up the position of
short-stop, and got a man to shove up behind. We got up a handsome
speed, and presently traversed a brick, and I went out over the top of
the tiller and landed, head down, on the instructor’s back, and saw the
machine fluttering in the air between me and the sun. It was well it
came down on us, for that broke the fall, and it was not injured.
Five days later I got out and was carried 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. Against
nature, but not against the laws of 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
can’t fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature
to make you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have
learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn German
is by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a grip on one villainy
of it at a time, and learn it—not ease up and shirk to the next,
leaving that one half learned.
When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the
machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your
next task—how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind
it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and
grasping the tiller with your hands. At the word, you rise on the peg,
stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a
general in indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the
saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but
you fall off. You get up and do it again; and once more; and then
several times.
By this time you have learned to keep your balance; and also to steer
without wrenching the tiller out by the roots (I say tiller because it
IS a tiller; “handle-bar” is a lamely descriptive phrase). So you steer
along, straight ahead, a little while, then you rise forward, with a
steady strain, bringing your right leg, and then your body, into the
saddle, catch your breath, fetch a violent hitch this way and then
that, and down you go again.
But you have ceased to mind the going down by this time; you are
getting to light on one foot or the other with considerable certainty.
Six more attempts and six more falls make you perfect. You land in the
saddle comfortably, next time, and stay there—that is, if you can be
content to let your legs dangle, and leave the pedals alone a while;
but if you grab at once for the pedals, you are gone again. You soon
learn to wait a little and perfect your balance before reaching for the
pedals; then the mounting-art is acquired, is complete, and a little
practice will make it simple and easy to you, though spectators ought
to keep off a rod or two to one side, along at first, if you have
nothing against them.
And now you come to the voluntary dismount; you learned the other kind
first of all. It is quite easy to tell one how to do the voluntary
dismount; the words are few, the requirement simple, and apparently
undifficult; let your left pedal go down till your left leg is nearly
straight, turn your wheel to the left, and get off as you would from a
horse. It certainly does sound exceedingly easy; but it isn’t. I don’t
know why it isn’t but it isn’t. Try as you may, you don’t get down as
you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire.
You make a spectacle of yourself every time.