At one P.M., on that day, the ponderous but shapely hull of the City of Chicago, with its living and lively freight, moves from the dock as though it, too, were endowed with mind as well with matter; the crowds that a minute ago disappeared down the gangplank are now congregated on the outer end of the pier, a compact mass of waving handkerchiefs, and anxious-faced people shouting out signs of recognition to friends aboard the departing steamer.

From beginning to end of the voyage across the Atlantic the weather is delightful; and the passengers - well, half the cabin-passengers are members of Henry Irving's Lyceum Company en route home after their second successful tour in America; and old voyagers abroad who have crossed the Atlantic scores of times pronounce it altogether the most enjoyable trip they ever experienced.

The third day out we encountered a lonesome-looking iceberg - an object that the captain seemed to think would be better appreciated, and possibly more affectionately remembered, if viewed at the respectful distance of about four miles. It proves a cold, unsympathetic berg, yet extremely entertaining in its own way, since it accommodates us by neutralizing pretty much all the surplus caloric in the atmosphere around for hours after it has disappeared below the horizon of our vision. I am particularly fortunate in finding among my fellow-passengers Mr. Harry B. French, the traveller and author, from whom I obtain much valuable information, particularly of China. Mr. French has travelled some distance through the Flowery Kingdom himself, and thoughtfully forewarns me to anticipate a particularly lively and interesting time in invading that country with a vehicle so strange and incomprehensible to the Celestial mind as a bicycle.

This experienced gentleman informs me, among other interesting things, that if five hundred chattering Celestials batter down the door and swarm unannounced at midnight into the apartment where I am endeavoring to get the first wink of sleep obtained for a whole week, instead of following the natural inclinations of an AngloSaxon to energetically defend his rights with a stuffed club, I shall display Solomon-like wisdom by quietly submitting to the invasion, and deferentially bowing to Chinese inquisitiveness. If, on an occasion of this nature, one stationed himself behind the door, and, as a sort of preliminary warning to the others, greeted the first interloper with the business end of a boot-jack, he would be morally certain of a lively one-sided misunderstanding that might end disastrously to himself; whereas, by meekly submitting to a critical and exhaustive examination by the assembled company, he might even become the recipient of an apology for having had to batter down the door in order to satisfy their curiosity. One needs more discretion than valor in dealing with the Chinese.

At noon on the 19th we reach Liverpool, where I find a letter awaiting me from A. J. Wilson (Faed), inviting me to call on him at Powerscroft House, London, and offering to tandem me through the intricate mazes of the West End; likewise asking whether it would be agreeable to have him, with others, accompany me from London down to the South coast - a programme to which, it is needless to say, I entertain no objections. As the custom-house officer wrenches a board off the broad, flat box containing my American bicycle, several fellow-passengers, prompted by their curiosity to obtain a peep at the machine which they have learned is to carry me around the world, gather about; and one sympathetic lady, as she catches a glimpse of the bright nickeled forks, exclaims, "Oh, what a shame that they should be allowed to wrench the planks off. They might injure it;" but a small tip thoroughly convinces the individual prying off the board that, by removing one section and taking a conscientious squint in the direction of the closed end, his duty to the British government would be performed as faithfully as though everything were laid bare; and the kind-hearted lady's apprehensions of possible injury are thus happily allayed.

In two hours after landing, the bicycle is safely stowed away in the underground store-rooms of the Liverpool & Northwestern Railway Company, and in two hours more I am wheeling rapidly toward London, through neatly cultivated fields, and meadows and parks of that intense greenness met with nowhere save in the British Isles, and which causes a couple of native Americans, riding in the same compartment, and who are visiting England for the first time, to express their admiration of it all in the unmeasured language of the genuine Yankee when truly astonished and delighted. Arriving in London I lose no time in seeking out Mr. Bolton, a well-known wheelman, who has toured on the continent probably as extensively as any other English cycler, and to whom I bear a letter of introduction. Together, on Monday afternoon, we ruthlessly invade the sanctums of the leading cycling papers in London. Mr. Bolton is also able to give me several useful hints concerning wheeling through France and Germany.

Then comes the application for a passport, and the inevitable unpleasantness of being suspected by every policeman and detective about the government buildings of being a wild-eyed dynamiter recently arrived from America with the fell purpose of blowing up the place. On Tuesday I make a formal descent on the Chinese Embassy, to seek information regarding the possibility of making a serpentine trail through the Flowery Kingdom via Upper Burmah to Hong-Kong or Shanghai. Here I learn from Dr. McCarty, the interpreter at the Embassy, as from Mr. French, that, putting it as mildly as possible, I must expect a wild time generally in getting through the interior of China with a bicycle.

The Doctor feels certain that I may reasonably anticipate the pleasure of making my way through a howling wilderness of hooting Celestials from one end of the country to the other. The great danger, he thinks, will be not so much the well-known aversion of the Chinese to having an "outer barbarian" penetrate the sacred interior of their country, as the enormous crowds that would almost constantly surround me out of curiosity at both rider and wheel, and the moral certainty of a foreigner unwittingly doing something to offend the Chinamen's peculiar and deep-rooted notions of propriety. This, it is easily seen, would be a peculiarly ticklish thing to do when surrounded by surging masses of dangling pig-tails and cerulean blouses, the wearers of which are from the start predisposed to make things as unpleasant as possible. My own experience alone, however, will prove the kind of reception I am likely to meet with among them; and if they will only considerately refrain from impaling me on a bamboo, after a barbarous and highly ingenious custom of theirs, I little reck what other unpleasantries they have in store. After one remains in the world long enough to find it out, he usually becomes less fastidious about the future of things in general, than when in the hopeful days of boyhood every prospect ahead was fringed with the golden expectations of a budding and inexperienced imagery; nevertheless, a thoughtful, meditative person, who realizes the necessity of drawing the line somewhere, would naturally draw it at impalation.

Not being conscious of any presentiment savoring of impalation, however, the only request I make of the Chinese, at present, is to place no insurmountable obstacle against my pursuing the even-or uneven, as the case may be-tenor of my way through their country. China, though, is several revolutions of my fifty-inch wheel away to the eastward, at this present time of writing, and speculations in regard to it are rather premature.

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Adapted from Thomas Stevens, Around the World on a Bicycle