As a consequence of this return of Nature’s children to Nature’s breast, the genii loci, the sylvan sprites, are all frightened inland from the borders of the beautiful river.  Except here and there where huge boards threaten trespassers and announce that landing is forbidden upon this Private Property, wild flowers will not grow, the grass looks trampled and dim, the soft summer zephyrs play among empty paper bags and relics of grocers’ parcels, with sound and sentiment vastly unlike their natural music among green, waving leaves.  The river is spoiled for the poet and the dreamer, and even the artist must choose his bits with care.  Hyde Park and Piccadilly have come up to the Thames; and what does Hyde Park care for the poetry of dreaming nature, or what the river-madmen for aught else than glorious expansion of muscle and strengthening of sinew and the godlike sense of largeness and lightness which comes with that strengthening and expanding?

Gliding up and down the river, one would suppose all London had taken to boats.  But we as trampists came to other conclusions as we pegged along the white Berkshire highways, smooth and even as parquetted floors, day after day.  There the bicycle holds its own, and more too, being largely adopted not only by genuine ’cyclists, but by others as well whose only interest is to cover the ground as quickly as possible,—­amateur photographers lashed all over with apparatus, artists shapelessly ditto, and pastoral postmen square-backed with letter-pouches.  Women tricyclists are only less numerous, and the dignity and modesty must be crude indeed that find objections to this manner of feminine peregrination.  The costume is simple and plain,—­close-fitting upper garments, without fuss of furbelow, and plain close skirts, met at the ankles by high buttoned boots.  A lady’s seat upon a tricycle is far less conspicuous than upon a horse, her bodily motion is less, and the movement of her feet scarcely more than is necessary to run a sewing-machine.  She sits at her ease in a perfectly lady-like manner, and flies over the ground like a courser of the desert, if she pleases, or rolls quietly and smoothly along, chatting easily with the pedestrians who amble at her side.

Lady tricyclists attract no attention whatever in Oxford Street.  Imagine one flying down Broadway!

As trampists our femininely-encumbered party in those delicious English days considered fourteen quotidian miles not discreditable to us, particularly when taking into consideration the bleats and baas and whimpering laggardness with which we returned from three-mile excursions during the first few days we were in the tramping-line.  By degrees we thus explored the whole country within a radius of seven miles of Ethel.  With this we were content, yea, even proud; for did not many of our boating women-neighbors grumble even at their walk to the river and declare they would rather row five miles than walk one?  We were proud, for we knew every church, every picturesque cottage and ruin, within our radius, while our aquatic friends knew only those bordering the river.  We were proud—­until, ah me! until that desolate day when a merrily, merrily flying squad swooped down upon us and declared they had ’cycled every inch of the twenty-mile periphery of which Ethel’s neighboring church tower was the centre!