in this book I shall find occasion to criticise them: but on the other
hand there is much that we might learn from them; and in the matter of
common sense, as applied to education, they can give us ninety-nine in a
hundred and beat us with one hand.

The beautiful wood of the Eilenriede bounds Hanover on the south and
west, and here occurred a sad drama in which Harris took a prominent
part.

We were riding our machines through this wood on the Monday afternoon in
the company of many other cyclists, for it is a favourite resort with the
Hanoverians on a sunny afternoon, and its shady pathways are then filled
with happy, thoughtless folk. Among them rode a young and beautiful girl
on a machine that was new. She was evidently a novice on the bicycle.
One felt instinctively that there would come a moment when she would
require help, and Harris, with his accustomed chivalry, suggested we
should keep near her. Harris, as he occasionally explains to George and
to myself, has daughters of his own, or, to speak more correctly, a
daughter, who as the years progress will no doubt cease practising
catherine wheels in the front garden, and will grow up into a beautiful
and respectable young lady. This naturally gives Harris an interest in
all beautiful girls up to the age of thirty-five or thereabouts; they
remind him, so he says, of home.

We had ridden for about two miles, when we noticed, a little ahead of us
in a space where five ways met, a man with a hose, watering the roads.
The pipe, supported at each joint by a pair of tiny wheels, writhed after
him as he moved, suggesting a gigantic-worm, from whose open neck, as the
man, gripping it firmly in both hands, pointing it now this way, and now
that, now elevating it, now depressing it, poured a strong stream of