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 simple 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
simple, 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 I
was 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.
Now it is true that I could have learned without a teacher,
but it would have been risky for me, because of my natural
clumsiness. The self-taught man seldom knows anything
accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have
known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags,
and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going
and doing as he himself has done. There are those who imagine
that the unlucky accidents of life–life’s “experiences”–are in
some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never
knew one of them to happen twice. They always change off and
swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side. If
personal experience can be worth anything as an education, it
wouldn’t seem likely that you could trip Methuselah; and yet if
that old person could come back here it is more that likely that
one of the first things he would do would be to take hold of one
of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. Now
the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask