impossibility of going two ways at once. " There's $50 fine for riding
a bicycle along the B. & A. Railroad," I am informed at Albany, but risk
it to Schodack, where I make inquiries of a section foreman. "No; there's
no foine; but av yeez are run over an' git killed, it'll be useless for
yeez to inther suit agin the company for damages," is the reassuring
reply; and the unpleasant visions of bankrupting fines dissolve in a
smile at this characteristic Milesian explanation. Crossing the Massachusetts
boundary at the village of State Line, I find the roads excellent; and,
thinking that the highways of the " Old Bay State " will be good enough
anywhere, I grow careless about the minute directions given me by Albany
wheelmen, and, ere long, am laboriously toiling over the heavy roads and
steep grades of the Berkshire Hills, endeavoring to get what consolation
I can, in return for unridable roads, out of the charming scenery, and
the many interesting features of the Berkshire-Hill country. It is at
Otis, in the midst of these hills, that I first become acquainted with
the peculiar New England dialect in its native home. The widely heralded
intellectual superiority of the Massachusetts fair ones asserts itself
even in the wildest parts of these wild hills; for at small farms - that,
in most States, would be characterized by bare-footed, brown-faced
housewives - I encounter spectacled ladies whose fair faces reflect the
encyclopaedia of knowledge within, and whose wise looks naturally fill
me with awe. At Westfield I learn that Karl Kron, the author and publisher
of the American roadbook, " Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle" - not to be
outdone by my exploit of floating the bicycle across the Humboldt - undertook
the perilous feat of swimming the Potomac with his bicycle suspended at
his waist, and had to be fished up from the bottom with a boat-hook.
Since then, however, I have seen the gentleman himself, who assures me
that the whole story is a canard. Over good roads to Springfield - and on
through to Palmer; from thence riding the whole distance to Worcester
between the tracks of the railway, in preference to the variable country