In the years following the introduction of the “boneshaker,” this new industry prospered and increased in an eminently solid way. Bone-shaking was not a pastime for the many, and it was not until the old “ordinary,” as it is still called, was introduced that the youth of that period went bicycling in any great numbers. The “ordinary,” or high bicycle, long since become extraordinary by supersession in favour of the dwarf “safety,” was gradually evolved through the middle Seventies to 1880. It was probably an early example of this build that so terribly frightened the rustic in _Punch_, who, going home in the dark, was scared by an “awful summat” he declared to be “a man a-ridin’ on nawthin’.” It was a graceful, albeit exceedingly dangerous type, and from its height of fifty-eight inches a rider surveyed the world as he went at a lordly altitude. The reverse of that commanding eminence was found when he was thrown: a happening that recurred with remarkable frequency and a nerve-shaking unexpectedness. Little in the shape of ruts or stones was required to upset the “ordinary,” and few long rides were ever made without a “spill.” To be shot off suddenly in mid-air was in fact so to be looked for, that riders studied how to fall, and practised the art so well that, although involuntary flights were many, serious injuries were few. The height of this art or science was to fall clear of the machine—an object attained, down hill, by riding with the legs over the handlebars, when, in the event of an accident, one fell a greater or shorter distance, according to the speed or the force of the shock. [Illustration: THE “OLD ORDINARY.”] The “ordinary” was at its height, in measurement and popularity, in 1880, a year that also marked the palmiest period of cycling clubs. The cyclist of that era made a brave show. Arrayed in a tight-fitting uniform, that in its frogged patrol-jacket and gauntlet gloves aped military costume, and in its tight breeches made the sudden strain of a fall the utter dissolution of those garments, his was a wonderful figure as he wended his uncertain way, gazing from his point of vantage over the countryside. But as his first youth waned, and his agility with it, rendering the exercise of vaulting into the saddle increasingly more of an enterprise, the cyclist yearned for a less giddy height than that of the “ordinary,” and his growing infirmities, more than any other consideration, eventually brought about the modern geared-up, rear-driving, dwarf bicycle the “safety”; but Time, the cynic, that has robbed the term “ordinary” of its meaning, has brought about many more fatal cycling accidents in these “safety” days than occurred in the era of the high bicycle. XLIII