Various

“ The point of a week's bicycle trip is, or should be, fun, unless the absolute object is a road record for so many hundred miles—fun and amusement and health; and therefore you must not ride so far that you begin to make work of it, nor so short a distance that you do not get the pleasure of the exercise. You should not tire yourself by riding up absurdly steep hills; you should not make yourself disgusted with wheeling, or your doctor disgusted with you, by trying to keep up with a better rider, or trying to beat some professional bicyclist's record. ”

“ We have imagined ourselves watching on Mars the progress of the life-giving water spreading from the south pole during the spring and early summer of that hemisphere of the planet. But we have noticed its effects only in the great depressed regions that may once have been actual seas. How about the still greater regions which nobody has ever supposed to be seas, and which appear on the charts of Schiaparelli and others under the name of continents? If Mars has not water enough to keep its sea-beds permanently covered, its dry lands must thirst indeed! ”

“ The red glare of the leafless and waterless wilderness, contrasting with the emerald lines that intersect it, makes a scene of overwhelming strangeness. In the remote distance our guides point out to us the metropolis of this part of Mars, placed in the broadest of the verdant spots, where our charts show the "Lake of the Sun," and surrounded by an immense system of irrigated belts, running out across the desert to the distant sea-swamps on all sides like the spokes of an enormous wheel, and so conspicuous that the Lick telescope and other telescopes have shown them from the earth. ”

“ Every one of those lines is sucking moisture from the polar overflow, and storing up subsistence for the great city and all the inhabitants of the land.
For this is not merely the harvest season on Mars; it is the time when every thought is on the future, and every energy is bent to the preservation of life upon the planet. Did we think that we had learned how to make the earth yield to us the full measure of its fertility? Bah! We had to come to Mars to find out that science. If we should return to this scene in a few months the story would be plain. ”

“ Doubtless we should feel as if we were walking on air, or as if we could jump over a house, for our muscular strength would remain the same. Imagine the feelings of an elephant suddenly removed to Mars! ”

“ At its touch vegetation would sprout and spring and wax great, with the magic rapidity that we sometimes see exhibited on the earth; the hard soil at its roots would fall apart and dissolve with moisture, and in a few weeks, where only the naked bones of the planet had been visible before, we should be able to wade neck-deep in seas of verdure, with long grasses waving softly in the vernal wind, and sweet flowers stroking our faces. ”

“ Through the corn-land and the vine-land of their irrigated belts, traversing the sandy wastes with strips of green, they would doubtless conduct us along magnificent shady roads to one of the numerous crossing-places where two or more of the fertile bands meet, and where our astronomers on the earth have noticed that there is always an oval dark spot, which some of them have thought must mark the site of a lake. ”

“ So much for some of the broad features of life on Mars as recent discoveries permit us to picture them, although it should be borne in mind that astronomy, as a science, does not assert—though it does not deny—that there is life at all on Mars. It allows us to draw our own conclusions. Now, then, continuing the supposition that there may be inhabitants on Mars, let us consider some other queer things that we should probably behold and experience on paying them a visit. ”

“ His eyes traversed the woods and the hill-side nearer. To the right should be the large mansion of Colonel Hewes. The panting horse was again reined in suddenly. There was nothing there where the Hewes house had stood but blackened walls and some stark timbers, whose outlines were softened by the new-fallen snow.
William felt a sense of sorrow besides one of fear and astonishment. He had intended to make his first venture of obtaining news at the house of Colonel Hewes. Now there was nothing to do but to press on and make a bold stroke. He would have to go to Stanham Mills. ”

“ On approaching Mars we should behold a world looking in some respects remarkably like the earth, having seasons resembling ours, with torrid, temperate, and frigid zones; turning on its axis like our globe, and in nearly the same time; showing in winter broad white caps, as of snow, covering its polar regions, and presenting many appearances suggestive of continents, oceans, islands, and peninsulas. ”

“ In the equatorial regions, where the earth is richest in all forms of life, it is not improbable that we should find Mars covered with one vast Sahara. We should have to go to the poles to discover anything like seas. When the snow-fields around the south pole began to melt away with the on-coming of summer, an opportunity would be given us to behold a spectacle that the earth cannot match. As the snow melted, the water thus formed would collect into a shallow sea, which would constantly tend to empty itself by flowing off toward the equator. ”

“ Mason appeared below with his cheerful "Good-morning," and Fanny followed after a little. Then Patty discovered, as they sat down to the breakfast table, that she had left her handkerchief upstairs, and she ran up to her uncle's room to release Abe. As she lifted the trap-door he crawled out, stiff and cramped. She hurried him up to the garret, for they were obliged to hide him until night. Poor Abe was so frightened that he could only say,
"Oh, Miss Patty, s'pose Marse Tom come up heah and catch me!"
"Oh, he won't," said Patty; "Uncle Tom never comes up garret." ”

“ That very evening the lad spoke to his father about going on a ranch and learning to be a cowboy. Unfortunately his brother John overheard him, and greeted the proposition with shouts of laughter. Even Amos Todd, while mildly rebuking his eldest son, could not help smiling at the absurdity of the request. Then, turning to the mortified lad, he said kindly but decidedly:
"You don't know what you are asking, Allie, my boy, and I wouldn't think for a moment of allowing you to attempt such a thing. The excitement of that kind of life would kill you in less than no time. ”

“ Whatever you do, never suffer yourselves, girls, to show irritation or amusement at the foibles of an old lady or gentleman. One is as hard to bear as the other. The sweet girl who is thoughtful for and deferent in manner to the old people she meets wins the love and admiration of every one.
One rather peculiar thing about very old people is a failure of memory. They tell you a story to-day, and to-morrow they forget that they told it, and tell it over again. ”

“ Another old-fashioned and exploded theory is that the athlete should run with his mouth shut. That is not necessary at all. In fact, sprinters are taught nowadays to run with their mouths open, and every first-class man in the event does so. It must be plain to every one that a man can get more air into his lungs, and thus facilitate the working of the heart, by inhaling through his mouth than through his nostrils. ”

“ As you go tripping on, with light steps, imagine what it would be to totter a little, to see dimly, to hear faintly, to feel worried at every little pain and mishap, to reach the days when "the grasshopper is a burden." No, you cannot do it. You are too full of life and gladness and energy. You are young, and youth is charming. ”

“ The training for the 100 yards and that for the 220 are almost identical, for an athlete who runs one of these events almost invariably becomes proficient in the other. In fact, the 220 is a long sprint—the word sprint meaning to run at full speed the entire distance of a race. The most important feature of sprinting, of course, is the start, and no runner can become too proficient in this. Up to within five or six years the standing start was universal, but in 1889 or 1890 Lee of the New York Athletic Club introduced the crouching start, and since then that has become the standard in America. ”

“ To the very young years count for more than they do to the older, who have lived longer, and have learned that the soul does not grow old with the body. I myself feel pity for elderly people who are ashamed of their age, and are so weak as to try to hide it, but I don't quite like to see young girls unsympathetic. ”

“ Uncle Tom never stays anywhere unless he's comfortable. But I can't help wondering how he gets on without servants, for Abe is always at his elbow on the plantation, and there's no one at all to wait on him here. I wonder," continued Patty, laughing a little, "what Uncle Tom and Fanny would think if they knew that Wellfield was a station in the underground railroad, and you the station-master, and the particular station our house, and the hiding-place under the closet floor in the very room that he sleeps in?" ”

“ An average ride for a girl of healthy out-door life and training—for there is always a certain amount of physical training in out-door life—is twenty miles in a day, with several stops. Here are four grades, so to speak, which merely give us a basis to work on. Now as to the time occupied. In the first, the man's twenty-mile ride, it would be safe to say two hours should be occupied in doing the ride. In the second, or woman's ten-mile ride, about an hour and a half altogether would be required. ”

“ So the poor lad, left to himself, without friends and without occupation, found time hanging very heavily on his hands, and wondered why he had ever been born.
Once he ventured to ask his father for a saddle-horse, whereupon Amos Todd presented him with a pair of ponies, a cart, and a groom, which he said was an outfit better suited to an invalid. Alaric accepted this gift without a protest, for he was well trained to bearing disappointments, but he used it so rarely that the business of giving the ponies their daily airing devolved almost entirely upon the groom. ”

“ Being accustomed to dwell on a globe three-fourths of whose surface is covered with water, it could not escape our notice that the world we were approaching had far more land than water. Indeed, it is likely that we should find that the "Hour-glass Sea," and many of the other so-called seas of Mars, are only part of the time filled with water, and that even then they are not like terrestrial oceans, but rather vast swamps, choked with rank vegetation suddenly awakened to life by periodical inundations supplying [Pg 409] moisture to their roots. ”

“ Dimmock going up into my room?"
"I suppose so," said her father; "no place is sacred when Mr. Dimmock goes hunting."
"Then I must go up a moment first," said Patty; "it isn't in order." And she left the room.
Mrs. Miller sat still and looked at the men, and Mr. Mason rose to his feet, saying,
"What's all this?"
The doctor knew that if he could keep the men back a very few moments Patty would hide Abe, for he was sure that his wife had made some plan with her. So he turned to Mr. Mason and said, "It's very likely, Tom, that I have a fugitive slave here, isn't it?" ”