from my earliest recollections, and up to the ripe age of fifty-three, i had been an active and diligent worker in the world. this sounds absurd; but having almost no toys except such as i could manufacture, my first plays were but the outdoor work of active men and women on a small scale. born with an inveterate opposition to staying in the house, i very early learned to use a carpenter’s kit and a gardener’s tools, and followed in my mimic way the occupations of the poulterer and the farmer, working my little field with a wooden plow of my own making, and felling saplings 10with an ax rigged up from the old iron of the wagon-shop. living in the country, far from the artificial restraints and conventions by which most girls are hedged from the activities that would develop a good physique, and endowed with the companionship of a mother who let me have my own sweet will, i “ran wild” until my sixteenth birthday, when the hampering long skirts were brought, with their accompanying corset and high heels; my hair was clubbed up with pins, and i remember writing in my journal, in the first heartbreak of a young human colt taken from its pleasant pasture, “altogether, i recognize that my occupation is gone.”
from that time on i always realized and was obedient to the limitations thus imposed, though in my heart of hearts i felt their unwisdom even more than their injustice. my work then changed from my beloved and breezy outdoor world to the indoor realm of study, teaching, writing, speaking, and went on almost without a break or pain until my 11fifty-third year, when the loss of my mother accentuated the strain of this long period in which mental and physical life were out of balance, and i fell into a mild form of what is called nerve-wear by the patient and nervous prostration by the lookers-on. thus ruthlessly thrown out of the usual lines of reaction on my environment, and sighing for new worlds to conquer, i determined that i would learn the bicycle.
an english naval officer had said to me, after learning it himself, “you women have no idea of the new realm of happiness which the bicycle has opened to us men.” already i knew well enough that tens of thousands who could never afford to own, feed, and stable a horse, had by this bright invention enjoyed the swiftness of motion which is perhaps the most fascinating feature of material life, the charm of a wide outlook upon the natural world, and that sense of mastery which is probably the greatest attraction in horseback-riding. but the steed that never tires, and is 12“mettlesome” in the fullest sense of the word, is full of tricks and capers, and to hold his head steady and make him prance to suit you is no small accomplishment. i had often mentioned in my temperance writings that the bicycle was perhaps our strongest ally in winning young men away from public-houses, because it afforded them a pleasure far more enduring, and an exhilaration as much more delightful as the natural is than the unnatural. from my observation of my own brother and hundreds of young men who have been my pupils, i have always held that a boy’s heart is not set in him to do evil any more than a girl’s, and that the reason our young men fall into evil ways is largely because we have not had the wit and wisdom to provide them with amusements suited to their joyous youth, by means of which they could invest their superabundant animal spirits in ways that should harm no one and help themselves to the best development and the cleanliest ways of living. so 13as a temperance reformer i always felt a strong attraction toward the bicycle, because it is the vehicle of so much harmless pleasure, and because the skill required in handling it obliges those who mount to keep clear heads and steady hands. nor could i see a reason in the world why a woman should not ride the silent steed so swift and blithesome. i knew perfectly well that when, some ten or fifteen years ago, miss bertha von hillern, a young german artist in america, took it into her head to give exhibitions of her skill in riding the bicycle she was thought by some to be a sort of semi-monster; and liberal as our people are in their views of what a woman may undertake, i should certainly have felt compromised, at that remote and benighted period, by going to see her ride, not because there was any harm in it, but solely because of what we call in homely phrase “the speech of people.” but behold! it was long ago conceded that women might ride the tricycle—indeed, one had been 14presented to me by my friend colonel pope, of boston, a famous manufacturer of these swift roadsters, as far back as 1886; and i had swung around the garden-paths upon its saddle a few minutes every evening when work was over at my rest cottage home. i had even hoped to give an impetus among conservative women to this new line of physical development and outdoor happiness; but that is quite another story and will come in later. suffice it for the present that it did me good, as it doth the upright in heart, to notice recently that the princesses louise and beatrice both ride the tricycle at balmoral; for i know that with the great mass of feminine humanity this precedent will have exceeding weight—and where the tricycle prophesies the bicycle shall ere long preach the gospel of outdoors.
for we are all unconsciously the slaves of public opinion. when the hansom first came on london streets no woman having regard to her social state and standing would have dreamed of entering one of these pavement 15gondolas unless accompanied by a gentleman as her escort. but in course of time a few women, of stronger individuality than the average, ventured to go unattended; later on, use wore off the glamour of the traditions which said that women must not go alone, and now none but an imbecile would hold herself to any such observance.
a trip around the world by a young woman would have been regarded a quarter of a century ago as equivalent to social outlawry; but now young women of the highest character and talent are employed by leading journals to whip around the world “on time,” and one has done so in seventy-three, another in seventy-four days, while the young women recently sent out by an edinburgh newspaper will no doubt considerably contract these figures.
as i have mentioned, fr?ulein von hillern is the first woman, so far as i know, who ever rode a bicycle, and for this she was considered to be one of those persons who classified nowhere, and who could not do so except to 16 the injury of the feminine guild with which they were connected before they “stepped out”; but now, in france, for a woman to ride a bicycle is not only “good form,” but the current craze among the aristocracy.
since balaam’s beast there has been but little authentic talking done by the four-footed; but that is no reason why the two-wheeled should not speak its mind, and the first utterance i have to chronicle in the softly flowing vocables of my bicycle is to the following purport. i heard it as we trundled off down the priory incline at the suburban home of lady henry somerset, reigate, england; it said: “behold, i do not fail you; i am not a skittish beastie, but a sober, well-conducted roadster. i did not ask you to mount or drive, but since you have done so you must now learn the laws of balance and exploitation. i did not invent these laws, but i have been built conformably to them, and you must suit yourself to the unchanging regulations of gravity, general and specific, as illustrated in 17 me. strange as the paradox may seem, you will do this best by not trying to do it at all. you must make up what you are pleased to call your mind—make it up speedily, or you will be cast in yonder mud-puddle, and no blame to me and no thanks to yourself. two things must occupy your thinking powers to the exclusion of every other thing: first, the goal; and, second, the momentum requisite to reach it. do not look down like an imbecile upon the steering-wheel in front of you—that would be about as wise as for a nauseated voyager to keep his optical instruments fixed upon the rolling waves. it is the curse of life that nearly every one looks down. but the microscope will never set you free; you must glue your eyes to the telescope for ever and a day. look up and off and on and out; get forehead and foot into line, the latter acting as a rhythmic spur in the flanks of your equilibriated equine; so shall you win, and that right speedily.
“it was divinely said that the kingdom of 18 god is within you. some make a mysticism of this declaration, but it is hard common sense; for the lesson you will learn from me is this: every kingdom over which we reign must be first formed within us on what the psychic people call the ‘astral plane,’ but what i as a bicycle look upon as the common parade-ground of individual thought.”
