Part 3

The question is often asked if riding a wheel is not the same as running a sewing-machine. Let the same doctor answer: “Not at all. Women, at least, sit erect on a wheel, and consequently the thighs never make even a right angle with the trunk, and there is no stasis of blood in the lower limbs and genitalia. Moreover, the work itself makes the rider breathe in oceans of fresh air; while the woman at the sewing-machine works indoors, stoops over her work, contracting the chest and almost completely checking the flow of blood to and from the lower half of her body, where at the same time she is increasing the demand for it, finally aggravating the whole trouble by the pressure of the lower edge of the corset against the abdomen, so that the customary congestions and displacements have good cause for their existence.”

“The great desideratum in all recreations is pure air, plenty of it, and lungs free to absorb it.” (Dr. Lyman B. Sperry.)

“Let go, but stand by”—this is the golden rule for parent and pastor, teacher and friend; the only rule that at once respects the individuality of another and yet adds one’s own, so far as may be, to another’s momentum in the struggle of life.

How difficult it is for the trainer to judge exactly how much force to exercise in helping to steer the wheel and start the wheeler along the macadamized highway! In this the point of view makes all the difference. The trainer is tall, the rider short; the first can poise on the off-treadle while one foot is on the ground, but the last must learn to balance while one foot is in the air. For one of these perfectly to comprehend the other’s relation to the vehicle is practically impossible; the degree to which he may attain this depends upon the amount of imagination to the square inch with which he has been fitted out. The opacity of the mind, its inability to project itself into the realm of another’s personality, goes a long way to explain the friction of life. If we would set down other people’s errors to this rather than to malice prepense we should not only get more good out of life and feel more kindly toward our fellows, but doubtless the rectitude of our intellects would increase, and the justice of our judgments. For instance, it is my purpose, so far as I understand myself, to be considerate toward those about me; but my pursuits have been almost purely mental, and to perceive what would seem just to one whose pursuits have been almost purely mechanical would require an act of imagination of which I am wholly incapable. We are so shut away from one another that none tells those about him what he considers ideal treatment on their part toward him. He thinks about it all the same, mumbles about it to himself, mutters about it to those of his own guild, and these mutterings make the discontent that finally breaks out in reforms whose tendency is to distribute the good things of this life more equally among the living. But nothing will probe to the core of this the greatest disadvantage under which we labor—that is, mutual non-comprehension—except a basis of society and government which would make it easy for each to put himself in another’s place because his place is so much like another’s. We shall be less imaginative, perhaps, in those days—the critics say this is inevitable; but it will only be because we need less imagination in order to do that which is just and kind to every one about us.

In my early home my father always set us children to work by stints—that is, he measured off a certain part of the garden to be weeded, or other work to be done, and when we had accomplished it our working-hours were over. With this deeply ingrained habit in full force I set myself stints with the bicycle. In the later part of my novitiate fifty attempts a day were allotted to that most difficult of all achievements, learning to mount, and I calculate that five hundred such efforts well put in will solve that most intricate problem of specific gravity.

Now concerning falls: I set out with the determination not to have any. Though mentally adventurous I have always been physically cautious; a student of physiology in my youth, I knew the reason why I brought so much less elasticity to my task than did my young and agile trainers. I knew the penalty of broken bones, for these a tricycle had cost me some years before. My trainers were kind enough to encourage me by saying that if I became an expert in slow riding I should take the rapid wheel as a matter of course and thus be really more accomplished (in the long run as well as the short) than by any other process. So I have had but one real downfall to record as the result of my three months’ practice, and it illustrates the old saying that “pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”; for I was not a little lifted up by having learned to dismount with confidence and ease—I will not say with grace, for at fifty-three that would be an affectation—so one bright morning I bowled on down the Priory drive waving my hand to my most adventurous aide-de-camp, and calling out as I left her behind, “Now you will see how nicely I can do it—watch!” when behold! that timid left foot turned traitor, and I came down solidly on my knee, and the knee on a pebble as relentless as prejudice and as opinionated as ignorance. The nervous shock made me well-nigh faint, the bicycle tumbled over on my prone figure, and I wished I had never heard of Gladys or of any wheel save

“Fly swiftly round, ye wheels of time, And bring the welcome day—”

of my release into the ether.

Let me remark to any young woman who reads this page that for her to tumble off her bike is inexcusable. The lightsome elasticity of every muscle, the quickness of the eye, the agility of motion, ought to preserve her from such a catastrophe. I have had no more falls simply because I would not. I have proceeded on a basis of the utmost caution, and aside from that one pitiful performance the bicycle has cost me hardly a single bruise.

AN ETHEREAL EPISODE

They that know nothing fear nothing. Away back in 1886 my alert young friend, Miss Anna Gordon, and my ingenious young niece, Miss Katharine Willard, took to the tricycle as naturally as ducks take to water. The very first time they mounted they went spinning down the long shady street, with its pleasant elms, in front of Rest Cottage, where for nearly a generation mother and I had had our home. Even as the war-horse snuffeth the battle from afar, I longed to go and do likewise. Remembering my country bringing-up and various exploits in running, climbing, horseback-riding, to say nothing of my tame heifer that I trained for a Bucephalus, I said to myself, “If those girls can ride without learning so can I!” Taking out my watch I timed them as they, at my suggestion, set out to make a record in going round the square. Two and a half minutes was the result. I then started with all my forces well in hand, and flew around in two and a quarter minutes. Not contented with this, but puffed up with foolish vanity, I declared that I would go around in two minutes; and, encouraged by their cheers, away I went without a fear till the third turning-post was reached, when the left hand played me false, and turning at an acute angle, away I went sidelong, machine and all, into the gutter, falling on my right elbow, which felt like a glassful of chopped ice, and I knew that for the first time in a life full of vicissitudes I had been really hurt. Anna Gordon’s white face as she ran toward me caused me to wave my uninjured hand and call out, “Never mind!” and with her help I rose and walked into the house, wishing above all things to go straight to my own room and lie on my own bed, and thinking as I did so how pathetic is that instinct that makes “the stricken deer go weep,” the harmed hare seek the covert.

Two physicians were soon at my side, and my mother, then over eighty years of age, came in with much controlled agitation and seated herself beside my bed, taking my hand and saying, “O Frank! you were always too adventurous.”

Our family physician was out of town, and the two gentlemen were well-nigh strangers. It was a kind face, that of the tall, thin man who looked down upon me in my humiliation, put his ear against my heart to see if there would be any harm in administering ether, handled my elbow with a woman’s gentleness, and then said to his assistant, “Now let us begin.” And to me who had been always well, and knew nothing of such unnatural proceedings, he remarked, “Breathe into the funnel—full, natural breaths; that is all you have to do.”

I set myself to my task, as has been my wont always, and soon my mother and my friend, Anna Gordon, who were fanning me with big “palm-leaves,” became grotesque and then ridiculous, and I remember saying (or at least I remember that I once remembered), “You are a couple of enormous crickets standing on your hind legs, and you have each a spear of dry grass, and you look as if you were paralyzed; and you wave your withered spears of grass, and you call that fanning a poor woman who is suffocating before your eyes.” I labored with them, entreated them, and dealt with them in great plainness—so much so that my mother could not bear to hear me talk in such a foolish fashion, and quietly withdrew to her own room, closed the door, and sat down to possess her soul in patience until the operation should be over.

Then the scene changed, and as they put on the splints pain was involved, and I heard those about me laughing in the most unfeeling manner while I murmured: “She always believed in humanity—she always said she did and would; and she has lived in this town thirty years, and they are hurting her—they are hurting her dreadfully; and if they keep on she will lose her faith in human nature, and if she should it will be the greatest calamity that can happen to a human being.”

Now the scene changed once more—I was in the starry heavens, and said to the young friends who had come in and stood beside me: “Here are stars as thick as apples on a bough, and if you are good you shall each have one. And, Anna, because you _are_ good, and always have been, you shall be given a whole solar system to manage just as you like. The Heavenly Father has no end of them; He tosses them out of His hand as a boy does marbles; He spins them like a cocoon; He has just as many after He has given them away as He had before He began.”

Then there settled down upon me the most vivid and pervading sense of the love of God that I have ever known. I can give no adequate conception of it, and what I said, as my comrades repeated it to me, was something after this order:

“We are like blood-drops floating through the great heart of our Heavenly Father. We are infinitely safe, and cared for as tenderly as a baby in its mother’s arms. No harm can come anywhere near us; what we call harm will turn out to be the very best and kindest way of leading us to be our best selves. There is no terror in the universe, for God is always at the center of everything. He is love, as we read in the good book, and He has but one wish—that we should love one another; in Him we live, and move, and have our being.”

Little by little, freeing my mind of all sorts of queer notions, I came back out of the only experience of the kind that I have ever known; but I must say that had I not learned the great evils that result from using anesthetics I should have wished to try ether again, just for the ethical and spiritual help that came to me. It let me out into a new world, greater, more mellow, more godlike, and it did me no harm at all.

During the time my arm was in a sling I “sat about”—something not easy to do for one of active mind and life. I learned to write with my left hand—for this was before the happy days of the many stenographers—and my hieroglyphics went out to all the leading temperance women of this country. One morning the bell, distant and musical, tolled in the steeple of the university. We knew it meant that General Grant was dead, for the newspapers and despatches of the previous evening had prepared us. Somehow a deep chord in my soul vibrated to the tone of the bell—a chord of patriotism—and I went away to the vine-covered piazza, where I was wont to sit, and in twenty minutes (which fact is my apology for their limping feet) wrote out my heart in the following lines. They had at least the merit of sincere devotion, and were telephoned to Chicago, eleven miles away, by Anna Gordon, and appearing in the daily _Inter-Ocean_ were read at their breakfast-tables by many other patriots next morning. I do not know when anything has given me more real pleasure than to be told that a stalwart soldier belonging to the Grand Army of the Republic read my crude but heartfelt lines aloud to his wife and daughter, and at the close brushed away a manly tear.

GRANT IS DEAD.

_On Hearing the University Bell at Evanston, Ill., Toll for the Death of General Grant at Nine O’clock A.M., July 23, 1885._

Toll, bells, from every steeple, Tell the sorrow of the people; Moan, sullen guns, and sigh For the greatest who could die. Grant is dead.

Never so firm were set those moveless lips as now, Never so dauntless shone that massive brow; The silent man has passed into the silent tomb. Ring out our grief, sweet bell, The people’s sorrow tell For the greatest who could die. Grant is dead.

“Let us have peace!” Great heart, That peace has come to thee; Thy sword for freedom wrought, And now thy soul is free, While a rescued nation stands Mourning its fallen chief— The Southern with the Northern lands, Akin in honest grief. The hands of black and white Shall clasp above thy grave, Children of the Republic all, No master and no slave. Almost “all summer on this line” Thou steadily didst “fight it out”; But Death, the silent, Matched at last our silent chief, And put to rout his brave defense. Moan, sullen guns, and sigh For the bravest who could die. Grant is dead.

The huge world holds to-day No fame so great, so wide, As his whose steady eyes grew dim On Mount McGregor’s side Only an hour ago, and yet The whole great world has learned That Grant is dead.

O heart of Christ! what joy Brings earth’s new brotherhood! All lands as one, Buckner, Grant’s bed beside, The priest and Protestant in converse kind; Prayers from all hearts, and Grant Praying “we all might meet in better worlds.” Toll, bells, from every steeple, Tell the sorrow of the people; So true in life, so calm and strong, Bravest of all, in death suffering so long And without one complaint! Moan, sullen guns, and sigh For the greatest who could die; Salute the nation’s head. Our Grant is dead.

IN CONCLUSION

If I am asked to explain why I learned the bicycle I should say I did it as an act of grace, if not of actual religion. The cardinal doctrine laid down by my physician was, “Live out of doors and take congenial exercise;” but from the day when, at sixteen years of age, I was enwrapped in the long skirts that impeded every footstep, I have detested walking and felt with a certain noble disdain that the conventions of life had cut me off from what in the freedom of my prairie home had been one of life’s sweetest joys. Driving is not real exercise; it does not renovate the river of blood that flows so sluggishly in the veins of those who from any cause have lost the natural adjustment of brain to brawn. Horseback-riding, which does promise vigorous exercise, is expensive. The bicycle meets all the conditions and will ere long come within the reach of all. Therefore, in obedience to the laws of health, I learned to ride. I also wanted to help women to a wider world, for I hold that the more interests women and men can have in common, in thought, word, and deed, the happier will it be for the home. Besides, there was a special value to women in the conquest of the bicycle by a woman in her fifty-third year, and one who had so many comrades in the white-ribbon army that her action would be widely influential. Then there were three minor reasons:

I did it from pure natural love of adventure—a love long hampered and impeded, like a brook that runs underground, but in this enterprise bubbling up again with somewhat of its pristine freshness and taking its merry course as of old.

Second, from a love of acquiring this new implement of power and literally putting it underfoot.

Last, but not least, because a good many people thought I could not do it at my age.

It is needless to say that a bicycling costume was a prerequisite. This consisted of a skirt and blouse of tweed, with belt, rolling collar, and loose cravat, the skirt three inches from the ground; a round straw hat, and walking-shoes with gaiters. It was a simple, modest suit, to which no person of common sense could take exception.

As nearly as I can make out, reducing the problem to actual figures, it took me about three months, with an average of fifteen minutes’ practice daily, to learn, first, to pedal; second, to turn; third, to dismount; and fourth, to mount independently this most mysterious animal. January 20th will always be a red-letter bicycle day, because although I had already mounted several times with no hand on the rudder, some good friend had always stood by to lend moral support; but summoning all my force, and, most forcible of all, what Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson declares to be the two essential elements—decision and precision—I mounted and started off alone. From that hour the spell was broken; Gladys was no more a mystery: I had learned all her kinks, had put a bridle in her teeth, and touched her smartly with the whip of victory. Consider, ye who are of a considerable chronology: in about thirteen hundred minutes, or, to put it more mildly, in twenty-two hours, or, to put it most mildly of all, in less than a single day as the almanac reckons time—but practically in two days of actual practice—amid the delightful surroundings of the great outdoors, and inspired by the bird-songs, the color and fragrance of an English posy-garden, in the company of devoted and pleasant comrades, I had made myself master of the most remarkable, ingenious, and inspiring motor ever yet devised upon this planet.

Moral: _Go thou and do likewise!_

Transcriber’s Note

Inconsistent hyphenation (horseback-riding/horseback riding) has been retained as printed.

End of Project Gutenberg's A Wheel Within a Wheel, by Frances E. Willard