of making my way through a howling wilderness of hooting Celestials from
one end of the country to the other. The great danger, he thinks, will
be not so much the well-known aversion of the Chinese to having an
"outer barbarian" penetrate the sacred interior of their country, as the
enormous crowds that would almost constantly surround me out of curiosity
at both rider and wheel, and the moral certainty of a foreigner unwittingly
doing something to offend the Chinamen's peculiar and deep-rooted notions
of propriety. This, it is easily seen, would be a peculiarly ticklish
thing to do when surrounded by surging masses of dangling pig-tails and
cerulean blouses, the wearers of which are from the start predisposed
to make things as unpleasant as possible. My own experience alone,
however, will prove the kind of reception I am likely to meet with among
them; and if they will only considerately refrain from impaling me on a
bamboo, after a barbarous and highly ingenious custom of theirs, I little
reck what other unpleasantries they have in store. After one remains in
the world long enough to find it out, he usually becomes less fastidious
about the future of things in general, than when in the hopeful days of
boyhood every prospect ahead was fringed with the golden expectations
of a budding and inexperienced imagery; nevertheless, a thoughtful,
meditative person, who realizes the necessity of drawing the line
somewhere, would naturally draw it at impalation. Not being conscious
of any presentiment savoring of impalation, however, the only request I
make of the Chinese, at present, is to place no insurmountable obstacle
against my pursuing the even-or uneven, as the case may be-tenor of my
way through their country. China, though, is several revolutions of my
fifty-inch wheel away to the eastward, at this present time of writing,
and speculations in regard to it are rather premature.

Soon after reaching London I have the pleasure of meeting "Faed," a
gentleman who carries his cycling enthusiasm almost where some people