W. L. Alden

“ Once the machine ran into an old woman who was crossing the road, and was either deaf or blind, but there wasn't very much of her, and the tricycle went over her like a horse taking a low fence. If it hadn't been for the excitement of the ride, and the thought of what the consequences would probably be when Mrs. Van Wagener should come to know about it, the Professor would probably have dropped exhausted, for he wasn't a very strong man. ”

“ Naturally the people who had been invited to see the machine work, rushed up to help the Professor and the young woman, and presently that machine had most of the leading citizens of New Berlinopolisville tied up in neat bundles, and lying around on the ground calling for help, except such of them as had been wrapped round with straw, and were too nearly suffocated to speak. The machine kept on its way, seeking for more citizens and more straw, until some man had sense enough to stop the horse, and so put an end to the performance. ”

“ The Professor never could say no, except to another scientific person; and so he told Mrs. Dumfries to get into the front seat and he would take her down to her house, which was about a quarter of a mile down the road.
"The machine went along all right, and the Professor worked his way cautiously along the main street with his brake on most of the time; but as soon as he got in the outskirts of the town he turned on the full current and let her whiz. The widow was delighted, and said that she had never enjoyed anything half so much in all her life. ”

“ I've started out half a dozen times to go to see the Tower, and I strike so many things that interest me that I have never yet got there. Take your cigar shops, for instance. Why, they are fifty years behind the age, and when I go into one I get talking with the proprietor, and trying to show him the error of his ways, till first I know it's too late to go anywhere. ”

“ But about this hyer tricycle. When bicycles and tricycles came to New Berlinopolisville, the Professor was mightily interested in them. Not that he admired them, but because, as he said, they were unscientific. He demonstrated with not more than half a slateful of figures that it took more exertion to drive a bicycle a mile than it would take to run that mile with a man's own legs. ”

“ They proved that a man weighing a hundred and forty pounds and driving an ordinary bicycle at the rate of ten miles an hour consumed, say, five hundred foot pounds of energy—if anybody knows what that means, and I don't much believe anybody does. ”