The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling IdyllWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Cycling -- Fiction; England -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction
After your first day of cycling one dream is inevitable. A memory of
motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they
seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that
change and grow; you ride down steeples and staircases and over
precipices; you hover in horrible suspense over inhabited towns, vainly
seeking for a brake your hand cannot find, to save you from a headlong
fall; you plunge into weltering rivers, and rush helplessly at
monstrous obstacles. Anon Mr. Hoopdriver found himself riding out of
the darkness of non-existence, pedalling Ezekiel’s Wheels across the
Weald of Surrey, jolting over the hills and smashing villages in his
course, while the other man in brown cursed and swore at him and
shouted to stop his career. There was the Putney heath-keeper, too, and
the man in drab raging at him. He felt an awful fool, a—what was it?—a
juggins, ah!—a Juggernaut. The villages went off one after another with
a soft, squashing noise. He did not see the Young Lady in Grey, but he
knew she was looking at his back. He dared not look round. Where the
devil was the brake? It must have fallen off. And the bell? Right in
front of him was Guildford. He tried to shout and warn the town to get
out of the way, but his voice was gone as well. Nearer, nearer! it was
fearful! and in another moment the houses were cracking like nuts and
the blood of the inhabitants squirting this way and that. The streets
were black with people running. Right under his wheels he saw the Young
Lady in Grey. A feeling of horror came upon Mr. Hoopdriver; he flung
himself sideways to descend, forgetting how high he was, and forthwith
he began falling; falling, falling.
He woke up, turned over, saw the new moon on the window, wondered a
little, and went to sleep again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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