HOW I LEARNED TO RIDE THE BICYCLE WITH SOME REFLECTIONS BY THE WAY BY FRANCES E. WILLARD Illustrated [Decoration: Spoked wheel] FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York      Chicago      Toronto 1895 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York      Chicago      Toronto 1895 [ 4 ] Copyright, 1895, By Fleming H. Revell Company. [ 5 ] GRATEFULLY DEDICATED TO LADY HENRY SOMERSET, WHO GAVE ME “GLADYS,” THAT HARBINGER OF HEALTH AND HAPPINESS....

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 [ 11 ] fifty-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 fe

Courtiers wittily say that horseback riding is the only thing in which a prince is apt to excel, for the reason that the horse never flatters and would as soon throw him as if he were a groom. Therefore it is only by actually mastering the art of riding that a prince can hold his place with the noblest of the four-footed animals. Happily there is now another locomotive contrivance which is no flatterer, and which peasant and prince must master, if they do this at all, by the democratic route of

I studied my various kind teachers with much care. One was so helpful that but for my protest she would fairly have carried me in her arms, and the bicycle to boot, the whole distance. This was because she had not a scintilla of knowledge concerning the machine, and she did not wish me to come to grief through any lack on her part. Another was too timorous; the very twitter of her face, swiftly communicated to her arm and imparted to the quaking cross-bar, convulsed me with an inward fear; there

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 c

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

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. [ 74 ] It is needless to say that a bicycling costume was a prerequisite. This cons