It turned out that I had nine skins, in layers, one on top of the other like the leaves of a book, and some of the doctors said it was quite remarkable.
I was full of enthusiasm over this insane amusement.

My teacher was a young German from the bicycle factory, a gentle, kindly, patient creature, with a pathetically grave face.

He never smiled; he never made a remark; he always gathered me tenderly up when I plunged off, and helped me on again without a word.

When he had been teaching me twice a day for three weeks I introduced a new gymnastic--one that he had never seen before--and so at last a compliment was wrung from him, a thing which I had been risking my life for days to achieve.

He gathered me up and said mournfully: "Mr.Clemens, you can fall off a bicycle in more different ways than any person I ever saw before." [Sidenote: (1849.)] A boy's life is not all comedy; much of the tragic enters into it.