re ever compassed--was
one of those old high bicycles, a fifty-two inch, I should guess, dating
from the late eighteen-seventies, which, although the year was 1916, was
being ridden along the Brighton front.

I am, unhappily, old enough to have been the owner of a bone-shaker,
upon which I can assure you I had far more amusing times than on any of
its luxurious progeny, even though they were fitted with every device
that all the engineers' brains in the world, together with the white hat
and beard of Mr. Dunlop, have succeeded in inventing. Being able to
remember the advent of the high bicycle and the rush to the windows and
gates whenever word went forth that one was approaching (much as a few
of the simpler among us still run when the buzz of the aeroplane is
heard), I was, as I watched the interest aroused among Brighton's
butterflies by this antique relic, in a position to reflect, not I trust
sardonically, but at any rate without any feelings of triumph, upon the
symmetrical completion of--I must not say one cycle of mechanical
enterprise, but one era. For this high bicycle (which was perhaps built
between thirty and forty years ago) wobbling along the King's Road drew
every eye. Before that moment we had been looking at I know not
what--the _Skylark_, maybe, now fitted with auxiliary motor power; or
the too many soldiers in blue clothes, with only one arm or one leg, and
sometimes with no legs at all, who take the sun near the Palace Pier and
are not wholly destitute of female companionship. But when this
outlandish vehicle came we all stopped to gaze and wonder, and we
watched it out of sight.

"Look at that extraordinary bicycle!" said the young, to whom it was
something of the latest.

"Well, I'm blessed," said the old, "if there isn't one of those high
bicycles from before the Flood!"

And not only did it provide a diverting spectacle, but it gave us
something to talk about at dinner, where we compared old feats perched
on these strange monsters, in the days when the road from John o' Groats
to Land's End was thick with competitors, and half the male world wore
the same grey cloth, and the Vicar of Ripley strove every Sunday for
the cyclist's soul.

Being myself didactically disposed, I went farther than reminiscence and
bored my companions with some such reflections as those that follow. It
is not given (I said) to many of us to have a second time on earth, but
this bicycle is having it, and enjoying it