VII

After this whirlwind Mr. Hoopdriver paid his reckoning and--being
now a little rested about the muscles of the knees--resumed his
saddle and rode on in the direction of Ripley, along an excellent
but undulating road. He was pleased to find his command over his
machine already sensibly increased. He set himself little
exercises as he went along and performed them with variable
success. There was, for instance, steering in between a couple of
stones, say a foot apart, a deed of little difficulty as far as
the front wheel is concerned. But the back wheel, not being under
the sway of the human eye, is apt to take a vicious jump over the
obstacle, which sends a violent concussion all along the spine to
the skull, and will even jerk a loosely fastened hat over the
eyes, and so lead to much confusion. And again, there was taking
the hand or hands off the handlebar, a thing simple in itself,
but complex in its consequences. This particularly was a feat Mr.
Hoopdriver desired to do, for several divergent reasons; but at
present it simply led to convulsive balancings and novel and
inelegant modes of dismounting.

The human nose is, at its best, a needless excrescence. There are
those who consider it ornamental, and would regard a face
deprived of its assistance with pity or derision; but it is
doubtful whether our esteem is dictated so much by a sense of its
absolute beauty as by the vitiating effect of a universally
prevalent fashion. In the case of bicycle students, as in the
young of both sexes, its inutility is aggravated by its
persistent annoyance--it requires constant attention. Until one