The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll |
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Common terms and phrases
abruptly ain't anyhow asked barmaid Beaumont Bechamel began bicycle Bognor breakfast brown Charlie Chichester chins cigarette clergyman Cosham course cycling cyclist Dangle dark dear delightful dismounted door draper dream driver eyes face Fareham feel felt fool gaiters gentleman girl Guildford hand Haslemere Havant head heard heath-keeper HENRY BALDWIN HYDE hill Hoop Hoopdriver Hoopdriver's imagine JAMES HAZEN HYDE James Lane Allen Jessie knees Lady in Grey legs looked machine Midhurst miles Milton mind minute Miss Mergle moustache never Norfolk jacket once ostler pause perhaps Phipps Putney remark rider riding Ripley road rode round the corner Rufus Stone scarcely seemed side silence stared stepmother stood stopped story street suddenly Surbiton talk tandem tandem bicycle tell There's thing thought turned voice walked wheel Widgery window woman wonderful yard Young Lady
Popular passages
Page 321 - This figure passes through Basingstoke and Bagshot, Staines, Hampton, and Richmond. At last, in Putney High Street, glowing with the warmth of an August sunset and with all the 'prentice boys busy shutting up shop and the work girls going home and the shop folks peeping abroad, and the white 'buses full of late clerks and city folk rumbling home to their dinners, we part from him. He is back. To-morrow the early rising, the dusting and drudgery, begin again — but with a difference, with wonderful...
Page 69 - Life — a great number of them certainly — his real life was absolutely uninteresting, and if he had faced it as realistically as such people do in Mr. Gissing's novels, he would probably have come by way of drink to suicide in the course of a year.
Page 79 - After your first day of cycling one dream is inevitable. A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow...
Page 183 - I'd been exercised properly, if I'd been fed reasonable, if I hadn't been shoved out of a silly school into a silly shop — But there ! the old folks didn't know no better. The schoolmaster ought to have. But he didn't, poor old fool! — Still, when it comes to meeting a girl like this — It's 'ard.
Page 80 - Where the devil was the brake? It must have fallen off. And the bell? Right in front of him was Guildford. He tried to shout and warn the town to get out of the way, but his voice was gone as well. Nearer, nearer! it was fearful! and in another moment the houses were cracking like nuts and the blood of the inhabitants squirting this way and that.
Page 42 - There's no hurry, sir, none whatever. I came out for exercise, gentle exercise, and to notice the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I get on that accursed machine than off I go hammer and tongs ; I never look to right or left, never notice a flower, never see a view — get hot, juicy, red — like a grilled chop. Here I am, sir. Come from Guildford in something under the hour. Why, sir ?
Page 275 - ... clerks look down on us. You look respectable outside, and inside you are packed in dormitories like convicts, fed on bread and butter and 273 bullied like slaves. You're just superior enough to feel that you're not superior. Without capital there's no prospects; one draper in a hundred don't even earn enough to marry on; and if he does marry, his GV can just use him to black boots if he likes, and he daren't put his back up. That's drapery ! And you tell me to be contented. Would you be contented...