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.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, Iput 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, 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 ****** 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 ******, 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.
II
During the eight days I took a daily lesson an hour and a half.At the end of this twelve working-hours' appreticeship Iwas graduated--in the rough.I was pronounced competent to paddle my own bicycle without outside help.It seems incredible, this celerity of acquirement.It takes considerably longer than that to learn horseback-riding in the rough.