'nB' Strange Happenings by Luke Sharp Author:Robert Barr General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1883 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: A DIABOLICAL WHEEL. YCLING isso common nowadays that peopleareapt to overlook the reckless daring that the individual must possess who sets out to master the diabolical wheel. If the man who first swallowed an oyster was brave, much more so was the individual who first mounted the dizzy height of the bicycle. The aristocratic bicycle must not be confounded with the plebeian velocipede. The latter is easily wrestled with, but the former gives the rider a numerous selection of choice tumbles that he can enjoy on no other vehicle invented by man. A velocipede cannot throw you over its head ; a bicycle can, and does with an ease and elegance that is appreciated by all except the party thrown. A tumble from the altitude of a bicycle-rider combines all the enjoyable sensations experienced by falling from a second-storey window. I met several young men of this city who were afflicted with bicyclomania, and they assured me that life without a bicycle was hardly worth living. Bicycle riding, I gathered from them, was the next best thing to flying. I have since learned that it is -- in many instances. A bicycle school is a large room divided by a row of pillars to make matters more interesting for the riders. The room that I undertook to study in is four storeys from the street, and the windows are barred like a prison, for the festive vehicle would enjoy nothing better than to send a person head first down on some unfortunate pedestrian below. But all such antics are barred out, because you are barred in. In the corner of the room are a dozen or so of those elegant steel, rubber-rimmed vehicles, whose tre...« less