 Composite photo from the Dave Thomson collection |
Get a bicycle. You will not regret
it. If you live. - "Taming the Bicycle" It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No--and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business. - "Taming the Bicycle" It was on the 10th day of May--1884--that I confessed to age by mounting spectacles for the first time, and in the same hour I renewed my youth, to outward appearance, by mounting a bicycle for the first time. The spectacles stayed on. - Mark Twain's Speeches |
There was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street, a measured
yard apart. Even after I got so I could steer pretty fairly I was so afraid
of those stones that I always hit them. They gave me the worst falls I ever
got in that street, except those which I got from dogs. I have seen it stated
that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able
to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true: but I think that the
reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. I did not
try to run over any dog. But I ran over every dog that came along. I think it
makes a great deal of difference. If you try to run over the dog he knows how
to calculate, but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate,
and is liable to jump the wrong way every time. It was always so in my experience.
Even when I could not hit a wagon I could hit a dog that came to see me practice.
They all liked to see me practice, and they all came, for there was very little
going on in our neighborhood to entertain a dog. It took time to learn to miss
a dog, but I achieved even that.
- "Taming the Bicycle"
Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links | Search