it;" but a small tip thoroughly convinces the individual prying off the
board that, by removing one section and taking a conscientious squint
in the direction of the closed end, his duty to the British government
would be performed as faithfully as though everything were laid bare;
and the kind-hearted lady's apprehensions of possible injury are thus
happily allayed. In two hours after landing, the bicycle is safely stowed
away in the underground store-rooms of the Liverpool & Northwestern
Railway Company, and in two hours more I am wheeling rapidly toward
London, through neatly cultivated fields, and meadows and parks of that
intense greenness met with nowhere save in the British Isles, and which
causes a couple of native Americans, riding in the same compartment, and
who are visiting England for the first time, to express their admiration
of it all in the unmeasured language of the genuine Yankee when truly
astonished and delighted. Arriving in London I lose no time in seeking
out Mr. Bolton, a well-known wheelman, who has toured on the continent
probably as extensively as any other English cycler, and to whom I bear
a letter of introduction. Together, on Monday afternoon, we ruthlessly
invade the sanctums of the leading cycling papers in London. Mr. Bolton
is also able to give me several useful hints concerning wheeling through
France and Germany. Then comes the application for a passport, and the
inevitable unpleasantness of being suspected by every policeman and
detective about the government buildings of being a wild-eyed dynamiter
recently arrived from America with the fell purpose of blowing up the
place. On Tuesday I make a formal descent on the Chinese Embassy, to
seek information regarding the possibility of making a serpentine trail
through the Flowery Kingdom via Upper Burmah to Hong-Kong or Shanghai.
Here I learn from Dr. McCarty, the interpreter at the Embassy, as from
Mr. French, that, putting it as mildly as possible, I must expect a wild
time generally in getting through the interior of China with a bicycle.
The Doctor feels certain that I may reasonably anticipate the pleasure