“To the left! Turn to the left, or this
jackass ’ll run over you!” The man started
to do it. “No, to the right, to the right!
Hold on! That won’t do!—to
the left!—to the right!—to the
left—right! left—ri—
Stay where you are, or you’re a goner!”
And just then I caught the off horse in the starboard
and went down in a pile. I said, “Hang
it! Couldn’t you see I was coming?”
“Yes, I see you was coming, but I couldn’t
tell which way you was coming. Nobody could—now,
could they? You couldn’t yourself—now,
could you? So what could I do?”
There was something in that, and so I had the magnanimity
to say so. I said I was no doubt as much to
blame as he was.
Within the next five days I achieved so much progress
that the boy couldn’t keep up with me.
He had to go back to his gate-post, and content himself
with watching me fall at long range.
There was a row of low stepping-stones across one
end of the street, a measured yard apart. Even
after I got so I could steer pretty fairly I was so
afraid of those stones that I always hit them.
They gave me the worst falls I ever got in that street,
except those which I got from dogs. I have seen
it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over
a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his
way. I think that that may be true: but
I think that the reason he couldn’t run over
the dog was because he was trying to. I did
not try to run over any dog. But I ran over
every dog that came along. I think it makes a
great deal of difference. If you try to run
over the dog he knows how to calculate, but if you
are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate,
and is liable to jump the wrong way every time.
It was always so in my experience. Even when
I could not hit a wagon I could hit a dog that came
to see me practice. They all liked to see me
practice, and they all came, for there was very little
going on in our neighborhood to entertain a dog.
It took time to learn to miss a dog, but I achieved
even that.
I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will
catch that boy one of these days and run over him
if he doesn’t reform.
Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you
live.
(from My Autobiography)
Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished
manuscript which constitute this formidable Autobiography
and Diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant
future be found which deal with “Claimants”—claimants
historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the
Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan,
Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare,
Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; Mary Baker G. Eddy,
Claimant—and the rest of them. Eminent
Claimants, successful Claimants, defeated Claimants,
