osed
it was a dead level; but it was not, as the bicycle now informed me,
to my surprise. The bicycle, in the hands of a novice, is as alert and
acute as a spirit-level in the detecting the delicate and vanishing
shades of difference in these matters. It notices a rise where your
untrained eye would not observe that one existed; it notices any decline
which water will run down. I was toiling up a slight rise, but was not
aware of it. It made me tug and pant and perspire; and still, labor as
I might, the machine came almost to a standstill every little while. At
such times the boy would say: "That's it! take a rest--there ain't no
hurry. They can't hold the funeral without YOU."

Stones were a bother to me. Even the smallest ones gave me a panic when
I went over them. I could hit any kind of a stone, no matter how small,
if I tried to miss it; and of course at first I couldn't help trying to
do that. It is but natural. It is part of the ass that is put in us all,
for some inscrutable reason.

It was at the end of my course, at last, and it was necessary for me to
round to. This is not a pleasant thing, when you undertake it for the
first time on your own responsibility, and neither is it likely to
succeed. Your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless
apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you
start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full
of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky
and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit
in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all prayers
and all your powers to change its mind--your heart stands still, your
breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work, straight on you go, and
there are but a couple of feet between you and the curb now. And now is
the desperate moment, the last chance to save yourself; of course all
your instructions fly out of your head, and you whirl your wheel AWAY
from the curb instead of TOWARD it, and so you go sprawling on that
granite-bound inhospitable shore. That was my luck; that was my
experience. I dragged myself out from under the indestructible bicycle
and sat down on the curb to examine.

I started on the return trip. It was now that I saw a farmer's wagon
poking along down toward me, loaded with cabbages. If I needed anything
to perfect the precariousness of my steering, it was just that. The
farmer was occ