Four o'clock in the morning was the time we left Cleveland and _whizzed along Buclid Avenue—the Park Lane of Cleve-Jand—with our faces turned nor-easterly. Four was an early hour to start—too early, indeed, for most hotels 10 provide breakfast. But America hay "dvantages over England. Every wheelman in London who likes to get off at daybreak knows the kind of firet meal he usually has—two dry and stale sandwiches, st "nding over-night under a napkin in the dining-room, and one glass of milk more or Jess on the turn. If ho wants anything hot, he must stealthily interview an itinerant vendor of coffee ata street corner, or boldly chum up t" the inmates of a cabman's shelter. We've done both in our ultra-salad days.
But in all American cities there is a ""lunch counter "—a kind of A.B.C., Lockhart's, and Pearce and Plenty roll-d into one. Lunch is not confined to a mid-day meal. You have it at bed-time or xt dawn. These lunch counters are open all night. And when the morning air was raw an chilly, we sat on high stools like city clerks and had hot coffee (price three-ha'pence), and_ hot ham and eggs (price tive-pence Well, away we wont wlong the Euclid Avenue, exciting no one's attention, for nobody was about save a stray gardener or two, sleepi'y sprinkling the lawn with a hand-hose, and a stray Thomas-cat or two crawling home after a night's dissipa-Out we got into the country, swishing over level ground, toiling up inclines, scorching down slopes—a fine, joyous spin till fifty miles were knocked off by nine o'dlocks, For we were going over really good cycling roads. From village to village and from town to town, we found a long-stret-hing track running by the bank-side, sometimes gravelled, more often cindered. As afrule it was not above a foot wile, But in the vicinity of towns it was ax broad as five feet. The tracks were specially luid down and specially kept in order for cyclists. For a man to ride a horse on shorn was to be anbjected to " ly dollar me.
Conceive, then, our good fortune, and admit we deserved it aft-r those months ut hard-going in the wild-west. With, of course, many breaks and lapses, here ww-5 a cycle track stretching hundreds of miles. 'Think of " nicely-cindered, herd, dry path running by the main road side from London to Birmingham, on to Manchester, over the border to Glasgow, branching off de to Edinburgh, down south' to Newcastle, Leeds, and No'tingham, and back into London again, then you'll know something of our final' spin in the land of the Almighty Dollar.
'There were no adventures. We had no collisions—not even a puncture, 'There was nothing to do but daily to knock together a century—ninety-eight miles one day, 104 the next, 110 the third, and an on—fiying through' fine land. Over the border +f Ohio we jumped, and into the state of Penneylvania, Here was no corn in the fields, but all the hill-sides flourished with innumerable vineyards. It was—mu_h to our regret—too early in the season to do any thieving:
Upon the right rose the low hills, with the road dipping and skirting among them inge of pasturage lay '0 the lof, four miles deep, and beyond dimmered Lake Erie, We gave the cold shoulder to the town of Krie, slipped out of the place without having even properly entered it, and Rid-alive hamlet that owns the wulled up for the night at a drowsy de:
North-east.
'A long morning of steady riding, edging. down to the lake side, with the thin const line of Canada quivering in the distant brought the smoky town of Buffalo in sight. It was a busy nfternoon—n hot, clammy, stewing murky afternoon—as, stripped to our shirts avd white knickerbockers. we tore along the principal street. Our high-built machines, our heavy bag. gage, and we ourselves, smothered in dust, attr otod attenti¢ "Make room for the travellers!" was the shout, and the crowd opened while we went on.
Hello, boys; travelling; far?" a wheel-
Oh, a little way down the rod," we would edge up and ask, replied.
"You ain't them three chaus that's rid-don round the world, are you?"
"Rather think we xre.""
"The——you are! Ain't you going to stop here? You ain't! "cause we've tthe finest wheeling tracks in the world ere; struth, no kid, You won'? All ight. Good-bye, boys; good luck."
Hello!" then yelled a lanky man ina alroot comer crowd. Lack riy thei fags. x," came the brisk retort of a fat neighbour, "that's the Cuban flag."
"Te ain't; it's the Spanish Fag!" said another.
Utell you i Union Jack, you pack of gor-darned sons of—"
We never heard how the dispute ended.
So Buffalo. with a tight population of nearly 400,000, smoky foundries, gigantic timber yards—262,729,000 fe-t of timber were landed last year; 2,365,8°5 tons of coal were wherfed in the same tim: railroads entering the city, and which cost i building $1,209,752,811 last yest, brought But no! avast to facts and figures which do nothing else but demonstrate that Buffalo will soon be a gigantic metropolis—the. finest in the world, sir. Tt needs no demonstration. There is already ewugh grime in Buffalo to make it rival London.
We -nshed on apace, cutting like the wind al-ug the boulevards. By a river-Seturday-to-Bloaday kind of town, hero bank we sped. We slipped into a gaunt, the people in the streets were all trippers, and the shops sold nothing but mugs with inscriptions, pens of white bone, with little holes to which you applied one eye, twisted your face into contortions, and thought you were looking at views; paper weights with more views, catch-penny trinkets, twopenny-halfpenny shows, and whole Stacks of photogenphs. We were at Niagara How easy it would be to_write'a yard of fluffy gush about Niagara Falls, to make comparis"ns between their roar and thun-to make this column ecintillate with adjectives, to picture the foaming, torrent, leaping, boiling, cauldron-like, into the chaam below; to dwell prettily on the rainbow effects, the clouds of spray, the majesty, the impressive no-s, te general ngamy of it all! Has ever author visited ara Falls without doing a "pen-picture? of the scene? Has ever excursionist gone theca for half-aday without writing a letter sixteen pages long telling you alk about it?
To our eternal glory be it recorded that we went to Niagara Fall-, suf by the edge of the descending torrents and smoked pipes, took tramear ides down thy gorge and saw the rapids and the whirl-el, paid two shillings each to climb int" oil, skins and stand on the deck of the Maid of the Mist und be taken into the froth of the Horse-shoe fall, that we gazed at the Falls from this point and that point—we heard one American girl describe them as "elegant"—but we uever—never!—usid the words "tremendous," "ave ful," "im. pressly Phere has been enough laudation already of the Niagara Falls to make them con-celted. There are forty ways of spelling Niagara—O sguianthra, Nicariagas, Ongiara, Onyakara, and such like, Thera are four hund-d million things that could be said about the Falls, Ht we don't sxy them, Greater honour than can be gamed by any amount of cycling is due to men who can go to Niagara nnd not go stark, staring, raving, adjectivally mad! That honour is ours.
(To be continued.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.