Truth has discovered that temperance is promoted, and character generally reformed, by the agency of the bicycle--in fact, the guilty class has taken to cycling.
That is so. Go into any police-court, and you will find culprits in the dock who have not only taken to cycling but have also taken other people's cycles.
Ask any burglar among your acquaintance, and he will tell you that the term Safety Bicycle has a deeper and truer meaning for him, when, in pursuit of his vocation, he is anxious not to come in collision with the police.
Look, too, at the Scorcher on his Saturday afternoon exodus. Where could you have a more salient and striking example of pushfulness and determination to "get there" over all obstacles? He is, in fact, an example of Nietzsche's "Ueber-mensch," the Over-man who rides over any elderly pedestrian or negligible infant that may cross his path.
Then the Lady in Bloomers. She is a great reforming agent. She looks so unsightly, that if all her sisters were dressed like her flirtation would die out of the land and there would be no more cakes and ale.
Think also of all the virtues called into active exercise by one simple puncture: Patience, while you spend an hour by the wayside five miles from anywhere; Self-control, when "swears, idle swears, you know not what they mean, swears from the depth of some divine despair rise in the heart and gather to the lips," as Tennyson has so sympathetically put it; Fortitude, when you have to shoulder or push the Moral Agent home; and a lot of other copy-book qualities.
Lastly, the adventurer who proceeds without a light within curfew hours, the sportsman who steals a march on the side-walk, and the novice who tries a fall with the first omnibus encountered--are all bright instances of British independence, and witnesses to Truth.
Truly, the bike is an excellent substitute for the treadmill and the reformatory!
Illustration: "AS OTHERS SEE US."--
Obliging Motorist. "Shall I stop the engine?"
Groom. "Never mind that, sir. But if you gents wouldn't mind just gettin' out and 'idin' behind the car for a minute,--the 'orses think it's a menagery comin'."
