_Truth_ has discovered that temperance is promoted, and character
generally reformed, by the agency of the bicycle--in fact, the guilty
class has taken to cycling.
That is so. Go into any police-court, and you will find culprits in the
dock who have not only taken to cycling but have also taken other
people's cycles.
Ask any burglar among your acquaintance, and he will tell you that the
term Safety Bicycle has a deeper and truer meaning for him, when, in
pursuit of his vocation, he is anxious not to come in collision with the
police.
Look, too, at the Scorcher on his Saturday afternoon exodus. Where could
you have a more salient and striking example of pushfulness and
determination to "get there" over all obstacles? He is, in fact, an
example of Nietzsche's "Ueber-mensch," the Over-man who rides over any
elderly pedestrian or negligible infant that may cross his path.
Then the Lady in Bloomers. She is a great reforming agent. She looks so
unsightly, that if all her sisters were dressed like her flirtation
would die out of the land and there would be no more cakes and ale.
Think also of all the virtues called into active exercise by one simple
puncture: Patience, while you spend an hour by the wayside five miles
from anywhere; Self-control, when "swears, idle swears, you know not
what they mean, swears from the depth of some divine despair rise in the
heart and gather to the lips," as Tennyson has so sympathetically put
it; Fortitude, when you have to shoulder or push the Moral Agent home;
and a lot of other copy-book qualities.
Lastly, the adventurer who proceeds without a light within curfew hours,
the sportsman who steals a march on the side-walk, and the novice who
tries a fall with the first omnibus encountered--are all bright
instances of British independence, and witnesses to _Truth_.
Truly, the bike is an excellent substitute for the treadmill and the
reformatory!
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