favored with another drenching down-pour of rain during the night, and
moisture relentlessly descends at short, unreliable intervals on Monday
morning, as I proceed toward Birmingham. Notwithstanding the superabundant
moisture the morning ride is a most enjoyable occasion, requiring but a
dash of sunshine to make everything perfect. The mystic voice of the
cuckoo is heard from many an emerald copse around; songsters that inhabit
only the green hedges and woods of "Merrie England" are carolling their
morning vespers in all directions; skylarks are soaring, soaring skyward,
warbling their unceasing paeans of praise as they gradually ascend into
cloudland's shadowy realms; and occasionally I bowl along beneath an
archway of spreading beeches that are colonized by crowds of noisy rooks
incessantly "cawing" their approval or disapproval of things in general.
Surely England, with its wellnigh perfect roads, the wonderful greenness
of its vegetation, and its roadsters that meet and regard their steel-ribbed
rivals with supreme indifference, is the natural paradise of 'cyclers.
There is no annoying dismounting for frightened horses on these happy
highways, for the English horse, though spirited and brim-ful of fire,
has long since accepted the inevitable, and either has made friends with
the wheelman and his swift-winged steed, or, what is equally agreeable,
maintain a a haughty reserve. Pushing along leisurely, between showers,
into Warwickshire, I reach Birmingham about three o'clock, and, after
spending an hour or so looking over some tricycle works, and calling for
a leather writing-case they are making especially for my tour, I wheel
on to Coventry, having the company, of Mr. Priest, Jr., of the tricycle
works, as far as Stonehouse. Between Birmingham and Coventry the recent
rainfall has evidently been less, and I mentally note this fifteen-mile
stretch of road as the finest traversed since leaving Liverpool, both
for width and smoothness of surface, it being a veritable boulevard.
Arriving at Coventry I call on "Brother Sturmey, " a gentleman well and
favorably known to readers of 'cycling literature everywhere; and, as I