One morning a little boy on horseback rode on ahead, and aroused the neighbors for miles. On another morning I got started early, and was noiselessly passing the house when the dog, I believe, gave the alarm, and the whole family, nine of them, broke from the breakfast-table and rushed out into the road, the farmer holding a Bible in his hand, with his finger in the place, so that the morning service might be resumed when I was gone. It was a pleasure to answer the questions of all these simple people, but when I passed through the larger towns it was really annoying to be the object of so much interest. At Grafton, for instance, I stopped on the sidewalk for a minute, and in less time than it takes to write this I was surrounded. Then I moved out upon the curbstone, and instantly the crowd surged into the street and gutter, simply to get in front and look me squarely in the face. Here a reporter, in the form of an elderly gentleman, slightly inebriated, interviewed me, and contrary to my usual feeling when being questioned, I was decidedly pleased this time, and the crowd enjoyed it fully as much. It was only after asking and hearing the answers to his questions over and over again that he was able to put them upon paper, and when I told him the distance I had traveled on the wheel he made a calculation in regard to the circumference of the earth that surprised me, but I said nothing. This is the result of his muddled memory as it appeared in a Grafton paper: "Mr. Thayer may be regarded as one of the most remarkable men of the age, who has accomplished the feat of traveling more than half way around the world on his bicycle. In his modest, unassuming way he informs us he has traveled 4,100 miles on his bicycle since leaving home." But to counterbalance the annoyance there were many things about the ride through West Virginia that were pleasing and new. A very busy branch of the Baltimore & "Ohar" railroad runs for miles close to the pike, and many times while I was climbing the long hill the trains would take a short cut and go through the hill, making the ground tremble beneath me as they rushed through the tunnel. The beauty of the changing foliage was at its prime, the air cool, and the wind blew the rustling leaves about with a pleasing noise. Sometimes I would sit down under a shady tree and quench my thirst with two or three nice apples (they were very plenty everywhere) or crack a few black walnuts, much to the anxiety of the chirping squirrels in the trees, or pull up a root of sassafras or a bunch of pennyroyal.