"Besides," remarked Harris, who had evidently been ruminating the subject, "you would not wish to have nothing but downhill, surely. It would not be playing the game. One must take a little rough with one's smooth." Again there returned silence, broken after awhile by George, this time. "Don't you two fellows over-exert yourselves merely on my account," said George. "How do you mean?" asked Harris. "I mean," answered George, "that where a train does happen to be going up these hills, don't you put aside the idea of taking it for fear of outraging my finer feelings. Personally, I am prepared to go up all these hills in a railway train, even if it's not playing the game. I'll square the thing with my conscience; I've been up at seven every day for a week now, and I calculate it owes me a bit. Don't you consider me in the matter at all." We promised to bear this in mind, and again the ride continued in dogged dumbness, until it was again broken by George. "What bicycle did you say this was of yours?" asked George. Harris told him. I forget of what particular manufacture it happened to be; it is immaterial. "Are you sure?" persisted George. "Of course I am sure," answered Harris. "Why, what's the matter with it?" "Well, it doesn't come up to the poster," said George, "that's all." "What poster?" asked Harris. "The poster advertising this particular brand of cycle," explained George. "I was looking at one on a hoarding in Sloane Street only a day or two before we started. A man was riding this make of machine, a man with a banner in his hand: he wasn't doing any work, that was clear as daylight; he was just sitting on the thing and drinking in the air. The cycle was going of its own accord, and going well. This thing of yours leaves all the work to me. It is a lazy brute of a machine; if you don't shove, it simply does nothing: I should complain about it, if I were you." When one comes to think of it, few bicycles do realise the poster. On only one poster that I can recollect have I seen the rider represented as doing any work. But then this man was being pursued by a bull. In ordinary cases the object of the artist is to convince the hesitating neophyte that the sport of bicycling consists in sitting on a luxurious saddle, and being moved rapidly in the direction you wish to go by unseen heavenly powers.