It seems a good while ago.

I must have been rather young for my age then, for I was trying to tame an old-fashioned bicycle nine feet high.

It is to me almost unbelievable, at my present stage of life, that there have really been people willing to trust themselves upon a dizzy and unstable altitude like that, and that I was one of them.

Twichell and I took lessons every day.

He succeeded, and became a master of the art of riding that wild vehicle, but I had no gift in that direction and was never able to stay on mine long enough to get any satisfactory view of the planet.