86 SPORT INDEED 



rience told me that exercise was the most effective 

 physic for the complaint and I was not long in 

 thinking of something that would give me plenty 

 of it. 



I asked the landlord of the hotel at which I stopped 

 if he had a bicycle in the house. He said he had, but 

 it was one of the female gender. 



" All the better," I replied. " Let me have it." 



How I mounted that bicycle I leave to the imagi- 

 nation of the reader ; but if he has never seen a man 

 with the lumbago, in the act of mounting the silent 

 steed, his imagination will be of little use to him. 

 To get on the saddle, usually the work of an instant, 

 now consumed many of them, and if " the steed " had 

 been a diamond frame, instead of the female sort, I 

 can't say that I ever would have got there. 



Once mounted I took a hard ride of a few miles, 

 with plenty of stiff hills to climb. When I got back 

 I was in a profuse perspiration. Then I sent for the 

 village doctor ; not that I had more faith in a village 

 doctor than any other sort, but because " any other 

 sort " was out of the question. He came, bringing 

 with him an electric battery and a big bottle of 

 iodine. Then baring my back for operations he soon 

 had the battery to work, and it played around my 

 lumbar regions and kept up its tingling sensations for 

 fifteen minutes. After this he painted my entire back 

 with the iodine and left me with the assurance that I 



