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.Idragged 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 occupying the middle of the road with his wagon, leaving barely fourteen or fifteen yards of space on either side.I couldn't shout at him--a beginner can't shout;if he opens his mouth he is gone; he must keep all his attention on his business.But in this grisly emergency, the boy came to the rescue, and for once I had to be grateful to him.
He kept a sharp lookout on the swiftly varying impulses and inspirations of my bicycle, and shouted to the man accordingly:
"To the left! Turn to the left, or this jackass 'll run over you!"The man started to do it."No, to the right, to the right!
Hold on! THAT won't do!--to the left!--to the right!--to the LEFT--right! left--ri-- Stay where you ARE, or you're a goner!"And just then I caught the off horse in the starboard and went down in a pile.I said, "Hang it! Couldn't you SEE I was coming?""Yes, I see you was coming, but I couldn't tell which WAY you was coming.Nobody could--now, COULD they? You couldn't yourself--now, COULD you? So what could _I_ do?
There was something in that, and so I had the magnanimity to say so.I said I was no doubt as much to blame as he was.
Within the next five days I achieved so much progress that the boy couldn't keep up with me.He had to go back to his gate-post, and content himself with watching me fall at long range.
There was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street, a measured yard apart.Even after I got so I could steer pretty fairly I was so afraid of those stones that I always hit them.They gave me the worst falls I ever got in that street, except those which I got from dogs.I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way.I think that that may be true: but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to.I did not try to run over any dog.But I ran over every dog that came along.I think it makes a great deal of difference.If you try to run over the dog he knows how to calculate, but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate, and is liable to jump the wrong way every time.It was always so in my experience.Even when I could not hit a wagon I could hit a dog that came to see me practice.They all liked to see me practice, and they all came, for there was very little going on in our neighborhood to entertain a dog.It took time to learn to miss a dog, but I achieved even that.
I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that boy one of these days and run over HIM if he doesn't reform.
Get a bicycle.You will not regret it, if you live.
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THE BEE
It was Maeterlinck who introduced me to the bee.I mean, in the psychical and in the poetical way.I had had a business introduction earlier.It was when I was a boy.It is strange that I should remember a formality like that so long; it must be nearly sixty years.
Bee scientists always speak of the bee as she.It is because all the important bees are of that ***.In the hive there is one married bee, called the queen; she has fifty thousand children; of these, about one hundred are sons; the rest are daughters.Some of the daughters are young maids, some are old maids, and all are virgins and remain so.
Every spring the queen comes out of the hive and flies away with one of her sons and marries him.The honeymoon lasts only an hour or two; then the queen divorces her husband and returns home competent to lay two million eggs.This will be enough to last the year, but not more than enough, because hundreds of bees are drowned every day, and other hundreds are eaten by birds, and it is the queen's business to keep the population up to standard --say, fifty thousand.She must always have that many children on hand and efficient during the busy season, which is summer, or winter would catch the community short of food.She lays from two thousand to three thousand eggs a day, according to the demand; and she must exercise judgment, and not lay more than are needed in a slim flower-harvest, nor fewer than are required in a prodigal one, or the board of directors will dethrone her and elect a queen that has more sense.
There are always a few royal heirs in stock and ready to take her place--ready and more than anxious to do it, although she is their own mother.These girls are kept by themselves, and are regally fed and tended from birth.No other bees get such fine food as they get, or live such a high and luxurious life.
By consequence they are larger and longer and sleeker than their working sisters.And they have a curved sting, shaped like a scimitar, while the others have a straight one.