About the third day I started before daybreak for my brother's summer cottage at Twin Lakes, Wis., about sixty-five miles northwest of Chicago. I arrived about noon, but, oh, the summersaults I did take. Honestly, when I got there, there was scarcely an inch on the wheel where the varnish was not scratched, or any very large patches on my legs where the skin was presentable, for when I took a heels over head into the wayside, the bark usually got scraped off of either the saplings or me. The next day I took a 100-mile circuitous route home, and then for a day was under the care of Dr. Chamberlain, my son-in-law, who was bound to have my picture taken, which I stubbornly declined, but now I wish I had it. MY FIRST HUNDRED MILE RUN My son, Arthur, then famous as one of the long distance riders of the west, got up a party of about twenty aspirants to take over the 100-mile Elgin and Aurora course at a breakneck speed. I was not fitted for such a run, but I fell in and we were all off at about five o'clock in the morning. The wind blew almost a gale in our faces and before we reached Elgin all had dropped out but Walton Aborn, Jim Carroll, Billy Push, Arthur and myself. Down the Fox River Arthur increased the pace to that extent that Billy threw himself into the shade of a barn and refused to budge, so we left him there. On the home run from Aurora, Jim Carroll declared his intention not to alight, as was customary at the S. Hill, but ride his wheel down, a feat which Arthur told him no fatigued rider should attempt. We fell back and let him lead, and held our breath as he shot out of sight around the first corner at a thirty-mile pace. When we turned the corner hoping to see Jim far away across the Skunkamunk Valley, we discovered a swath in the roadside down through the underbrush, briers and brambles nearly to the foot of the hill. At the end of the swath under an immense heap of rubbish we found Jim and his wheel, he blinking like a toad under a harrow. [Illustration: OUR WASHINGTON BOULEVARD HOME IN THE DAYS WHEN THE SADDLE HORSE CRAZE WAS ON. LEFT TO RIGHT. ALBERTA, MERRICK, BARNEY, MARY, MINNIE, ARTHUR, ARTHUR ASTRIDE THE DEACON, MY FAVORITE.] Jim groaned and grunted and finally told us he did not think he was dead, but his back was probably broken. We soon had him on his feet with his wheel righted and was pleased to learn that, with the exception of the few tufts of hair and chunks of hide left in the trail where he had slidden down, he was the same man, only his eyes were so full of gravel that he could not see. He now proposed to take a bath in the creek in order to find out just how much skin he had left on his body. For this purpose he attempted to crawl under the barbed wire fence, into which his clothes got caught in such a way that he could neither raise up nor let down, back out or push forward, work his pants off, or keep his shirt on.