Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume 1 eBook

Thomas Stevens (cyclist)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 677 pages of information about Around the World on a Bicycle.

Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume 1 eBook

Thomas Stevens (cyclist)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 677 pages of information about Around the World on a Bicycle.
past between her wagon and the ditch; and holds her long, stiff buggy-whip so that it " swipes " me viciously across the face, knocks my helmet off into the mud ditch, and well-nigh upsets mo into the same.  The woman-a crimson-crested blonde — jogs serenely along without even deigning to turn her head.  Leaving the bicycle at “Isham’s “-who volunteers some slight repairs-I take a flying visit by rail to see Niagara Falls, returning the same evening to enjoy the proffered hospitality of a genial member of the Buffalo Bicycle Club.  Seated on the piazza of his residence, on Delaware Avenue, this evening, the symphonious voice of the club-whistle is cast adrift whenever the glowing orb of a cycle-lamp heaves in sight through the darkness, and several members of the club are thus rounded up and their hearts captured by the witchery of a smile-a " smile " in Buffalo, I hasten to explain, is no kin whatever to a Rocky Mountain “smile” - far be it from it.  This club-wliistle of the Buffalo Bicycle Club happens to sing the same melodious song as the police — whistle at Washington, D. C.; and the Buffalo cyclers who graced the national league — meet at the Capital with their presence took a folio of club music along.  A small but frolicsome party of them on top of the Washington monument, “heaved a sigh " from their whistles, at a comrade passing along the street below, when a corpulent policeman, naturally mistaking it for a signal from a brother “cop,” hastened to climb the five hundred feet or thereabouts of ascent up the monument.  When he arrived, puffing and perspiring, to the summit, and discovered his mistake, the wheelmen say he made such awful use of the Queen’s English that the atmosphere had a blue, sulphurous tinge about it for some time after.  Leaving Buffalo next morning I pass through Batavia, where the wheelmen have a most aesthetic little club-room.  Besides being jovial and whole-souled fellows, they are awfully sesthetic; and the sweetest little Japanese curios and bric-d-brac decorate the walls and tables.  Stopping over night at LeBoy, in company with the president and captain of the LeBoy Club, I visit the State fish-hatchery at Mumford next morning, and ride on through the Genesee Valley, finding fair roads through the valley, though somewhat hilly and stony toward Canandaigua.  Inquiring the best road to Geneva I am advised of the superiority of the one leading past the poor-house.  Finding them somewhat intricate, and being too super-sensitive to stop people and ask them the road to the poor-house, I deservedly get lost, and am wandering erratically eastward through the darkness, when I fortunately meet a wheelman in a buggy, who directs me to his mother’s farm-house near by, with instructions to that most excellent lady to accommodate me for the night.  Nine o’clock next morning I reach fair Geneva, so beautifully situated on Seneca’s silvery lake, passing the State agricultural farm en route; continuing on up the Seneca Eiver, passing-through Waterloo and Seneca Falls to Cayuga, and from thence to Auburn and Skaneateles, where I heave a sigh at the thoughts of leaving the last — I cannot say the loveliest, for all are equally lovely — of that beautiful chain of lakes that transforms this part of New York State into a vast and delightful summer resort.

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Project Gutenberg
Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.