Whatever may be said against aeroplanes in full flight, and there is quite a long indictment--that they are, for instance, not at all like birds, and much more like dragon-flies, and are too noisy, and too rigid, and so forth,--no one in his senses can deny that as they rise from the ground--especially if you are behind them and they are receding swiftly in a straight line from you, and even more so if you are personally acquainted with the occupants--they have beautiful and exciting qualities. Not soon shall I forget the sight as my guests in their biplane glided exquisitely from the turf into the air and, after one circular sweep around our bewildered heads, swam away in the direction of the Hog's Back. That was phenomenon No. 1. Phenomenon No. 2--also connected with the mechanics of quicker movement than Shanks's mare ever compassed--was one of those old high bicycles, a fifty-two inch, I should guess, dating from the late eighteen-seventies, which, although the year was 1916, was being ridden along the Brighton front. I am, unhappily, old enough to have been the owner of a bone-shaker, upon which I can assure you I had far more amusing times than on any of its luxurious progeny, even though they were fitted with every device that all the engineers' brains in the world, together with the white hat and beard of Mr. Dunlop, have succeeded in inventing. Being able to remember the advent of the high bicycle and the rush to the windows and gates whenever word went forth that one was approaching (much as a few of the simpler among us still run when the buzz of the aeroplane is heard), I was, as I watched the interest aroused among Brighton's butterflies by this antique relic, in a position to reflect, not I trust sardonically, but at any rate without any feelings of triumph, upon the symmetrical completion of--I must not say one cycle of mechanical enterprise, but one era. For this high bicycle (which was perhaps built between thirty and forty years ago) wobbling along the King's Road drew every eye. Before that moment we had been looking at I know not what--the _Skylark_, maybe, now fitted with auxiliary motor power; or the too many soldiers in blue clothes, with only one arm or one leg, and sometimes with no legs at all, who take the sun near the Palace Pier and are not wholly destitute of female companionship. But when this outlandish vehicle came we all stopped to gaze and wonder, and we watched it out of sight. "Look at that extraordinary bicycle!" said the young, to whom it was something of the latest. "Well, I'm blessed," said the old, "if there isn't one of those high bicycles from before the Flood!"