Lyra Cyclus; or, The Bards and the Bicycle
Compiled by Edmond Redmond1897207 chapters2 images
Contents
- Edmond Redmond's editorial preface, arguing that the bicycle is a 'revolutionary agent' that has remade daily life and even enlarged literature, since a new school of poesy has arisen to celebrate the bicycling world; it notes that many of the selections are set to well-known airs and that credit is given to author and original publication wherever possible.
- The collection's four-page alphabetical list of sources -- the newspapers, magazines and cycling papers (Bearings, L.A.W. Bulletin, Punch, Irish Cyclist, St. Nicholas, Outing, Judge, Life and dozens more) together with the individual poets, from Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Charles G. D. Roberts to Harriet Prescott Spofford and Nixon Waterman, from whom the poems were drawn.
- Harriet Prescott Spofford's lyric from St. Nicholas, sung to 'When the Heir Returns', on a swift silent night ride -- bells tinkling like fireflies in the wheat, riders sliding like apparitions past garden gates and up the startled street.
- Jeannette E. Fowler's twelve-line squib from the New York Sun, to 'The Girl I Left Behind Me': a gusty autumn hill fills a bloomer girl's costume like a sail and leaves a lonely road and a wheel without a rider.
- M. Ware Johnson's tandem love song in the Detroit Free Press, to 'Love's Young Dream', urging stolen kisses 'a-wheeling in the rear' before one's tires -- and life's abysses -- are sprung.
- Irving Gilmore's poem from the New York Sun, to 'Annie Laurie': a breezy afternoon tandem ride with Phyllis in the time of meadow lilies and bobolinks, the rider's heart whirring faster than the wheel.
- A New York World narrative in quatrains, to 'When ye Gang awa', Jamie': two sweethearts quarrel, ride out separately, both puncture on the same thorny road, and are reconciled when Sue carries her pump across to the pumpless Ned.
- A Philadelphia Times song to 'The Valley Lay Smiling', with the refrain 'She's a bicycle, bicycle girl', in which the poet hears his love's silvery bells ringing away past meadows and groves.
- A Boston Courier joke from the Boston Courier on the much-discussed 'bicycle face': the poet's best example is the cycling churl who had the face to borrow his bike and elope with his best girl. Set to 'Ben Bolt'.
- Holly's monologue in the Evening Telegram, to 'Yankee Doodle', in which a woman declares she would rather ride astride with dropped handlebars, high gear, bloomers and a gay sweater than sit erect and be correct.
- A. Tyre O.'s satire from Vanity Fair, to 'Roy's Wife', mourning the death of rational conversation now that dinner tables, drawing rooms and even Queen's Counsel talk only of handlebars, gear cases and self-oiling hubs.
- A Cleveland Leader quatrain-set from the Cleveland Leader, to 'Scenes That Are Brightest': the society beauty with Titian-tinted hair scorns guitar and china because her wheel is laid up for repairs.
- F. J. G.'s mock-epic in Cycling, to 'Marching Through Georgia', reporting the Greco-Trojan cycle races at Troy -- Philoctetes as starter, Helen leading the ladies' race, and Achilles dragging Hector by the heel to a judges' dead heat.
- A Washington Star portrait, to 'Jessie, the Flower of Dumblane', of the sallow, specter-thin scorcher who sees only dust, recks nothing of bruised victims, and exists solely in his ankles and feet.
- A Washington Star piece to 'There is Nae Luck' asking where the summer girl, the spinster, the matron and the college girl have gone: hammock, easy chair and books stand empty, for each is out upon a wheel.
- A Brooklyn Life anecdote to 'King O'Toole': a frightened woman's bike runs away down a grade, brakes and all, and a Cycle Squad policeman -- himself a scorcher -- arrests her and impounds the lawless machine.
- John W. Low's comic proposal in the New York World, to 'Row, Brothers, Row': the bashful suitor wobbles through his declaration, both riders crash head over heels, and she accepts on condition he buy a duplex next time.
- Charles G. D. Roberts's lyric from Truth, to 'Old Dog Tray', revising his boyish belief that every maiden was an angel: since seeing Phillida a-wheel he places her somewhere between man and angel, and would follow her anywhere.
- A Boston Courier poem to 'Auld Lang Syne': the summer girl deserts the beach for the highway, exchanging the bathing dress for a biking suit, and fascinates her humble slaves in either season.
- Mary F. Nixon's Wordsworth parody in the New York Sun, to 'Mary Blane': the wan summer girl's seven are bruises -- two on the ankle, two on the knee, two on the arm and a black eye -- yet she would ride if the wheel were a catapult.
- A Chicago Journal poem in Scots dialect, to 'Green Grow the Rushes': a sober rider is overtaken by a witch-like lass in Tam o' Shanter's bonnet, cries that he yields the race, and is coolly asked 'Wha's racin' wi' you, laddie?'
- Joe Lincoln's poem in the Buffalo Courier, to 'Oft in the Stilly Night': the watcher's heart goes with the rider who passes daily, but her papa is in the Standard Oil and he is his hired man -- she rides the wheel while he wheels the road.
- Frederic S. Hartzell's verse in the Cleveland World, to 'Cruiskeen Lawn': her face, her wheeling and her ample dowry had the youth completely conquered, until he saw her bloomers bagging at the knees and preferred to stay a bachelor.
- A Boston Courier tribute to 'Maid of Lodi' praising a modest country rider who scorches only where travellers are rare, wears a well-made suit that shows no leg, and would charm an anchorite.
- Dick Law's monologue in the New York Sun, to 'One Bumper at Parting': the end-of-the-century girl, having discarded petticoats, read Ibsen and Nordau and toiled at her wheel, plans to cremate her togs and lie in a hammock with bonbons.
- A Cleveland Leader eight-liner to 'Robin Adair': the lover proposes to fly with her to a distant clime and is told that if she is to travel with him he will have to ride a bike.
- A Punch poem to 'Nora Creina' begging Phyllis to give up coasting -- a 'dangerous practice' that risks her neck and breaks the poet's heart, whatever the display of a well-turned ankle.
- An unattributed advertisement in verse, to 'Blue Bells of Scotland': a battered learner wants a new kneepan warranted not to split, a fresh set of ribs, unfluted ears and a plain face not black and blue, before he will mount again.
- A pair of stanzas from Life and the Boston Courier, to 'Rob Roy McGregor': the neighbourhood rumour that 'Meeker and his wife are out' is confirmed -- they are out daily upon their wheel.
- A. K. S.'s poem in the C.T.C. Gazette, set to 'Araby's Daughter' (corrected in the errata to 'I'm the Son of a Gambolier'): a woman of nearly sixty argues that cycling beats schottische, polka and waltz, and vows to ride until her limbs fail.
- An Irish Cyclist poem to 'Moll Roe' in which a rider who cannot do twelve miles an hour, keeps his machines three seasons and never exceeds sixty gear defends his leisurely habits against the scorchers of speed and fame.
- Joe Lincoln's twelve-line query in the L.A.W. Bulletin, to 'Irish Molly O': why does the dainty maid cover her limbs with skirts to the heel while the thin one wears a cycling skirt that ends at the knee?
- A long Chicago Tribune catalogue poem to 'On the Beach at Long Branch', running through road-race crowds, a father pedalling with baby aboard, a beginner steering into a hydrant, and Mr. Adipose riding morning, noon and evening to get thin.
- A Boston Courier argument to 'Coming Thro' the Rye' for legs over bicycles: the wheelman's grim eyes see only the skimming road, and he and a maid have whisked a dozen leagues apart before he can think aye or no.
- W. P. French's ballad in The Irish Cyclist, to 'The Gypsy King': the Frost King ices the country round Foxbrush Hall so the hounds cannot run, but the host mounts fifty bicycles for a hunt on wheels and the King mutters 'Fooled at last.'
- A Detroit Free Press fable to 'I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls': the Indian chief who lassoed a locomotive left only a dangling cord and a little jerked beef -- a warning to the dames crusading against the flying wheel.
- A Bicycling News poem to 'Hibernia's Lovely Jean' cataloguing the wheel's constituency -- duke and belle, business man, labourer on a fearsome crock, schoolboy on a juvenile -- and calling on cyclers of every clime to sing the praises of St. Velo.
- A Washington Star ballad to 'Paddies Evermore' about a daredevil of bucking broncos, mail coaches, cannon-ball pilots and toboggans who howled for help and weakened only when they got him on a bike.
- Earl H. Eaton's short lyric in Truth, to 'My Heart and Lute', in which the stars are wheeling cycle lamps and the poet and Daisy run the evening pike as 'two hearts that scorch as one'.
- Arthur H. Lawrence's song in Cycling World, to 'Wait for the Wagon', built on the refrains ride, race, ring and love, and closing with the old rider's glad memories of the wheel.
- A Philadelphia News eight-liner to 'Over the Garden Wall': the girl's sunny smile is her last as she carroms on a cobble stone and her twinkling heels shine over the handle bar.
- H. E.'s parody of 'Little drops of water' in the L.A.W. Bulletin, to 'Down in a Coal Mine': dust and rain bring the mighty wheelman to unexpected stops and make him feel a bit profane.
- A Cleveland Leader parody of 'I love it, I love it, and who shall dare', to 'When I Was a Lad': the treasured relic with bent sprocket and parted links is grandma's old machine, which she rode with grandpa humping along at her side.
- A Cleveland Plain Dealer song to 'Carnival of Venice' whose sentimental vision of the waiting sweetheart is punctured by the last lines -- she waits at every turn because he rides so awful slow.
- James D. Dowling's poem in the L.A.W. Bulletin, to 'The Heart Bowed Down': Tennyson's Mariana becomes a girl with a flattened tire and no repair kit, sobbing 'I wish that I were dead!'
- Edward F. Strange's ballade in the Cycling World, to 'Genevieve', with the refrain 'Who rides with nose between his knees' and an L'Envoi in which a coal cart and stern Justice await the Ripley Road scorcher.
- A Bearings poem to 'Bonnie Eloise' in which the poet offers a dime and a half-page advertisement for a rhyme to the cycling girl's bifurcated garment, since 'breeches' would forfeit his riches and 'trousers' will not do.
- A Boston Courier complaint to 'Then You'll Remember Me': Lucinda wants a wheel and bloomers, but he cannot bear the thought of her stately form bent over a bike, and thinks she would be better equipped with wings.
- An Irish Cyclist lyric in brogue, to 'The Wanderer', declaring nothing beats the sight of a bright bicycle with a young Irish girl on it, and that the poet needs only one of the Three Fates.
- A Richmond Dispatch eight-liner to 'The Young May Moon': the rider boasts she feels like a world-conquering cavalier, until a field mouse crosses the road and the gully reveals a pot pourri of maid and wheel.
- A Punch parody of Tennyson's 'Break, break, break', to 'Farewell, My Own', recast as 'Bike! Bike! Bike!' and lamenting that the girlish grace the wheel struck dead will never come back.
- A Cleveland Plain Dealer joke to 'Lauriger Horatius': the youth on the bench never rose to greet his sweetheart because he had sat down where someone spilled a tube of bike cement.
- A poem from the Southern Cycler (printed 'Southern Cyclist' and corrected in the errata), to 'Days of Jubilee': teaching a girl to ride is the most irksome job or the most ecstatic bliss, depending entirely on whose the girl is.
- A Chicago Times-Herald rondeau in the Chicago Times-Herald, to 'Hours There Were': the rider stands disconsolate at Nellie's gate with the tandem, counting minutes and begging her to hurry to the lantern-lit Midway.
- An L.A.W. Bulletin poem to 'The Days When We Went Gypsying' spoken by a tramp who wishes for good roads, hates narrow wagon wheels, and invites the reader to join 'our L. A. W., which means we Loaf and Walk'.
- Edwin Austin Oliver's lyric in the L.A.W. Bulletin, to 'The Low-backed Car': a man of three score years and ten finds the world bright and himself young again whenever Peggy rides.
- Tom Masson's dialogue poem in Life, to 'My Lodging is on the Cold Ground': every place where he longed to propose she remembers as a saddle out of gear, a wabbling front wheel or a punctured tire -- and she accepts him to get a brand-new wheel.
- Joe Lincoln's song in the L.A.W. Bulletin, to 'Sprig of Shillelagh': the wild scorcher carries no lantern and uses no bell, the ambulance follows wherever he rides, and the poet hopes he gets all the scorching he wants hereafter.
- Glory Anna's marching song in the L.A.W. Bulletin, to 'John Brown's Body', with a 'Glory, Glory, Hallelujah' chorus calling brothers and sisters out into the country for a little run.
- William Carleton's dialogue in the L.A.W. Bulletin, to 'The Sword of Bunker Hill': asked what streams, meadows and hamlets he saw, the century rider can only repeat 'I did a hundred miles!'
- A Burns parody from Scottish Nights -- 'If a body meet a body riding on a wheel' -- in which ilka tandem goes at random and the lads who wink would kiss on the sly.
- George Bancroft Smith's tall tale in the L.A.W. Bulletin, to 'Oh, No, We Never Mention Her': the record-breaker who coasted the pyramids, scorched Timbuctoo and outrode every crack in the profession could not dodge the sprinkling cart.
- Post Wheeler's poem in the New York Press, to 'Dublin Bay', on riding a storm down at dawn -- spokes strung to the tune of the paling stars, fingers burning, and the tumbling rain at the end.
- An Answers poem to 'Rich and Rare Were the Gems She Wore' celebrating the wet-day rapture of taking the bicycle apart -- bearings, chain, mud-guards and inner tube -- and then taking it to the shop to be put back into shape.
- Irving Gilmore's lyric in the Buffalo Express, to 'Haste to the Wedding': a nymphean rider spins past, gown flowing free and boots pressing prettily on the pedals, and the watcher fetches his own wheel to steal after her.
- A Detroit Free Press piece to 'There is Nae Luck': it is not the costume, cap, shoe or curving spine that gives the wheelman away, but the mud-streak down his back.
- F. J. McBeth, Jr.'s catalogue of troubles in the L.A.W. Bulletin -- the hill beyond the vale, the frowning copper, the sprinkled street, the spill, the unmendable break twenty miles from a railroad and no supper in sight.
- A Harper's Bazaar poem to 'Royal Charlie' in which the rider grooms, polishes and doctors his bicycle as a horseman does his steed, forgives its shying and wabbling, and prizes it for being no tax on his pocketbook in winter.
- A Wilkesbarre News Dealer squib to 'Molly Brallaghan': the preacher's sermon on little things -- the pitted apple, the acorn, the giant's stone -- leaves the cyclist unimpressed until he finds a pin has pierced his tire.
- Manley H. Pike's three-stanza tribute in the Buffalo Express, to 'The Spider and the Fly': Gerty flies past before the crowd's eyes are cast, leads every rider on the course, and seems a happy thing of sunshine and air.
- E. G. K.'s parody in the Post Dispatch, to 'Kinloch of Kinloch': Locky outscorches the scorchers, crashes the wedding of his lost Nell, dances a polka and carries her off to the altar on a wheel built for two.
- An American Cycling lyric to 'Killarney' in two eight-line stanzas: Cynthia speeds up the valley each sunny day and bides by an old tree in the forest, where a free wheelman comes singing Eros' song.
- Charles Dryden's parody of 'The Arab's Farewell to His Steed' in the San Francisco Examiner, to 'Roslin Castle': the wheel has been pinched by the bike cop for scorching, and the rider ends by pawning his watch for bail and leaping on its back again.
- A New York Tribune plea to 'Land o' the Leal' or 'Scots Wha Hae' that woman not take to the cycle -- her dainty form was never made to brave the eye-glassed stare in bloomer costume, nor to fall on spine or nose.
- A Boston Courier version of 'Mary had a little lamb', to 'John Anderson, My Jo': the schoolteacher's bike drives the children crazy, they beg one apiece, and the school is closed while Mary and her retinue bike the town's macadamed pike.
- A Boston Courier dialogue to 'My Love She's But a Lassie Yet': the couple just introduced at a dance are man and wife, who rarely meet because she is all day in cycle flight and he is at the club all night.
- A Washington Star poem to 'Kathleen Mavourneen' defending the woman cyclist's mild bifurcation and her claim to the ballot against the ponderous prose and villainous verse of her critics.
- A Washington Times ballad to 'The Wearing of the Green': a mounted policeman chases a scorcher through horses and wagons while the crowd cheers the racer and wagers ten to one, until the outdistanced cop draws his pistol and pierces the tire.
- A short autumn scene by '17,729' in the L.A.W. Bulletin, to an air from 'Norma': the cyclist on a fence views the ground, fills his sweater full and round with fruit, then mounts his wheel and scoots.
- A Brooklyn Life poem to 'We Won't Go Home Till Morning': the rich and witty Frances takes to wheeling, talks of nothing but her bicycle, hands her beaux their dismissals and leaves home on a tandem with a clerk at ten per week.
- Susie M. Best's poem in New Bohemian, to 'Afton Water', in repeating-line stanzas on a brief-skirted rider attended by six gallants, ending with the resolve to ask her to marry and try a wheel built for two.
- A poem signed 'M.' in the New York World, to 'The Campbells Are Coming': the bachelor who went to the bicycle race dreams not of the bicycle face but of an army of damsels and 'a rare show of fine Christmas stockings'.
- An Irish Cyclist poem to 'From Cove to Cork' tracing the rider's successive certainties -- his glittering 54-inch ordinary, then the lowly safety frame, then the pneumatic -- and predicting a bicycle fleet with all their studding sails set.
- An Irish Cyclist monologue to 'The Watch on the Rhine' spoken by the bicycle itself, which carries the clerk to the fields, glides to Sandymount and Bray, is racked on the racing track, saves cab and tram fares, and warns of a long repair bill when wrecked.
- Ida Trafford Bell's poem in the Imperial Magazine on the 'fresh air code': where grandma wore lacy caps and aged at forty, the new woman at sixty has a woman of thirty's vigour and turns to her tried friend the wheel.
- A Toledo Bee catalogue from the Toledo Bee of what women in each city keep in their bloomer pockets -- a flask in Kentucky, a pistol in Texas, Robert Browning in Boston, suffrage speeches in Kansas, pork quotations in Chicago, a corkscrew in Milwaukee and tire-mending gum in Gotham.
- A London Sketch rhapsody to 'Farewell, But Whenever You Welcome the Hour', asking in heavily alliterative stanzas whether the reader has ever felt the fever of the whirling wheel, the boundless buoyance of the breezy hills and the peace the fields reveal.
- A Chicago Inter-Ocean instruction poem to 'Mollie Bawn' giving the pedal positions -- right at the centre, left nearest the ground -- the backward draw for impetus and the dainty touch on the handle bar.
- A Cleveland Leader parody of Hood's 'The Bridge of Sighs' over a bloomer girl who struck a banana peel: take her up tenderly, loop up her tresses, throw a sheet over her, and leave her wheel there.
- A Cleveland Plain Dealer squib to 'Raw Recruits' or 'Abraham's Daughter': the man who ran beside his two-hundred-pound wife while she learned to ride soon travelled hence, and her second husband bought a tandem.
- An eight-line prayer from Clips: in crowded street or country lane the poet cannot escape the scorcher's tire, and begs only not to be abused before he is broken on the wheel.
- An L.A.W. Bulletin satire on the frictionless, impossibly high-geared wonder-machine that is always promised for next year -- 'Don't buy until you see it, for they've worked it out -- almost.'
- A New York Press poem to the 'Marseillaise', prompted by a paragraph that the Ameer of Afghanistan has taken to cycling: he scorches through the Khyber Pass, Kandahar and Jelalabad and kisses his lass before halting at old Kabul.
- Percy A. Atherton's eight lines in the L.A.W. Bulletin noting that girls who once wore skirts down to their heels now wear bloomers or bikers and look quite neat in them.
- A Boston Courier blessing on the whirling wheel for taking the maid next door, who used daily to pound the piano-forte, to another brand of athletic sport that bears her miles away.
- A Cleveland Leader parody of Scott: Lochinvar comes out of the West with the best wheel and only an air-pump for a weapon, rides the sidewalks where no cops are, is hit over the pate at Netherby gate and goes home in a car.
- A poem signed 'Marie' in the Boston Globe recalling autumn evenings learning to ride, and hinting that the lessons were learned best while the pair sat resting and the bicycle leaned against a good old tree.
- A Somerville Journal word-play from the Somerville Journal: the fine fair form of femininity he had always known turns out, in the light of the reigning craze, to be 'continuously a-wheel'.
- A St. James Gazette poem in Whitmanesque free verse spoken by the machine itself, from Baron von Drais scrawling two circles in the dust, through bone-shaker and velocipede, to the rational dress it brought and the limited companies it floated: 'I am the Bike.'
- A New Orleans Times-Democrat parody of Jaques' speech -- 'All the world's a-wheel, and all the cyclers merely tired' -- running from the sprawling pollywog and whining tyro through the trick cycler in the prisoner's dock to final cyclomania.
- Charles S. Crandall's poem in Youth's Companion calling the wheel a toy beyond Aladdin's dreaming and the work of a mighty necromancer, whose shining spokes bring bright eyes and rosy cheeks to youth and age alike.
- A Washington Evening Star poem to 'Billy O'Rourke' in which the neglected baby wails from his cradle the refrain 'My father's talking politics, and mother rides a wheel.'
- A New York Telegram quatrain-pair: Mary's beau brings her a flashing red bike, she rides it to a field where a surly cow roams, screams for aid, and the neighbours pick her off a bough.
- An 'Exchange' poem answering a bishop's complaint that cyclists ride on Sundays instead of coming to church, and proposing England copy the American parson who rides with the party and preaches when they halt to rest or mend a tire.
- A St. Paul's parody of Longfellow: young Tommy's blind shot brings down a dove which falls on Laura's hat as she rides, and her best young man asks whether she wears a bird upon her head.
- Geo. V. Hobart's poem in the Nebraska State Journal lamenting that the love who was fairer than any dream girl has been replaced by a scorcher in loud bloomers with a hump on her back and a bicycle face.
- A Detroit News parody of 'The Village Blacksmith': the smith under the spreading chestnut tree is a lonely man with large but useless hands, having never learned to mend broken wheels.
- A Chicago Times-Herald squib in two-beat lines, to 'Dan Tucker': a bloomer girl slips on orange peel and suffers a fatal rip, a man with a mackintosh wraps her round, and the band plays on.
- A Judge poem in which the rider cannot go as fast as he would like because Polly is only learning, and concludes that when riding for pleasure 'a miss is as good as a mile'.
- A Chicago Observer poem of six stanzas denouncing one hideous, coarse and derivationless word, wishing its inventor shut up for life, and revealing it only in the final line as 'BIKE'.
- N. F. Milburn's eight lines in the Sun: the quiet lane where lovers whispered at twilight is deserted by shy couples now that every novice in town goes there to try his wheel.
- A St. James Gazette catechism from the St. James Gazette whose every answer is 'The Bicycle' -- what bends men's figures to an S, what makes Amanda save and scrape, what plays the deuce with Yankee trade, and why minor poets go uncut.
- A Chicago Tribune sequence of nursery rhymes rewritten for the wheel: Tom the Piper's son steals one and is locked up in Harrison street, Peter smashes his wife's bike, and the 'sundries' cost more than the machine.
- A Buffalo Commercial parody of Whittier running to three pages: the freckled bloomer girl lends the coasting Judge her pump, each thinks of the other and marries elsewhere, and she at last cuts the bloomers down for her oldest boy -- 'Leave pants for men!'
- Chas. J. Colton's poem in the New Orleans Times-Democrat wishing for some other land where females are still females, clinging robes are the style, and 'the bloomers cease from blooming and the panties pant no more'.
- A Bicycling News eight-liner: a fellow could once take his girl out alone on a tandem and find a quiet spot, but now that brothers and sisters have all gone cycling the wise lover sticks to the sofa at home.
- A New York Telegram poem urging riding in spring, summer, winter and fall, and finding the last of them the grandest time of all.
- Mary F. Nixon's poem in the New York Sun, a pastiche in the manner of Keats and Wordsworth addressing the 'high rolling cycler' whose rubber band casts him to the hard ground, and closing with 'My heart leaps up when I behold a bicycle pass by'.
- A Somerville Journal poem to 'Beautiful Isle of the Sea': a tall, rich and domineering Boston maid of Pilgrim blood finds her faith rudely shaken when she tries to ride across a little streak of mud.
- A Boston Courier eight-liner to 'My Boat is on the Shore': the maiden longs for the ocean or the mountains in fierce July, but every cent she earns pays the installments on her bike.
- A Boston Courier preference from the Boston Courier for neither the biking girl who shows her shapely limbs nor the swimmer, but the pretty girl who sits on the sand with a sunshade and lets him squeeze her hand.
- Helen Pitkin's narrative in the New Orleans Times-Democrat: Lou announces that her mother has at last consented to a wheel, and returns a week later plastered, limping and swearing off wheels for ever -- though her old laugh shows her bones unbroken.
- A Somerville Journal poem contrasting Mary's natty cycling suit, leggings and saucy cap with Harry's strapped trousers and cat-like humped back, and drawing the moral that bicyclists should be careful how they dress.
- An Atlanta Constitution poem to 'Life Let Us Cherish': Love has lost his wings, taken to a bicycle and now chases human hearts down the dusty ways -- 'Love's a scorcher now!'
- An eight-line L.A.W. Bulletin parody of Hood's 'The Bridge of Sighs' over one more unfortunate who tried to scorch and is 'all in a heap'.
- A Cleveland Plain Dealer parody of Cowper's Selkirk in the scorcher's mouth: monarch of all he surveys, he enjoys the charms of a swift pace, breaking arms and now and then spoiling a face.
- A New York Journal parody of Poe in three movements -- warning bells, loud alarm bells, buzzing dreadful bells -- on the tintinnabulation of cycle bells that sends women running and men behind trees.
- A Boston Courier eight-liner on the 'sweet and beautiful bicyclene' who takes the lead of the trolley car, and the wish to be the handle bar she grasps with her lily hand.
- A Buffalo Courier poem in short lines on a golden-haired, fair-faced, divinely formed girl whose bicycle posture -- back humped, head near the handle bars -- makes 'such a sight'.
- Grace F. Reed's parody of Tennyson's 'Break, break, break' in the New York Advertiser: the punctured rider is fifteen miles from a bed and a good square meal, and would that his lips could mutter the cuss words that he feels.
- Charles Eugene Banks's lyric in the Chicago Observer on an early ride by hedges, leafy wood and waving corn, with the recurring stanza that the swallow in the sky has greater need of man's companionship than the rider on his steed.
- F. J. Macbeth's code in verse from the L.A.W. Bulletin: turn right when meeting and pass left when overtaking, lend tools and assistance, ring once at a crossing but not from behind, light lamps, ride slowly in the city, dismount for frightened horses, and ride for pleasure and health rather than mileage or speed.
- A Pall Mall Gazette parody of Browning: the midnight ride ends when the rider turns his head, hits a fence and punctures a tire, and the burgesses of the place feel bound to pump up the machine that brought the good news.
- Adriel Vere's sonnet in The Spectator addressing the wheel as 'dear other self, so silent, swift and sure' and dumb companion of delightful days, the two of them one living thing flashing down the long tracks.
- A New York Commercial Advertiser quatrain-pair: Mary meets a brick and goes sliding down the road, a passing youth helps to set her right end up, and now little Mary's married.
- Robert Grant's poem in Harper's Weekly rebuking the bent-backed, melancholy-faced scorcher as the homeliest thing on earth, and urging him to sit up straight, enjoy the trees and sunshine and make the landscape glad.
- A poem from The Roseleaf in which a biker asks a farmer whether a lady has wheeled that way, and is told that from the costumes now worn it is mighty hard to say whether a biker is a she one or a he.
- A Chicago Evening Post monologue by a knickerbockered woman who talks the sprocket lingo, rides a hundred miles, mends her own tires, notes that her father cooks and her brother sews, and finds she is getting too rapid for the men.
- A Philadelphia North American eight-liner: the record-breaking chump tore along the busy street, scorned the warning cries, ran plump on a coal cart, and now his wheel is on the dump.
- A Cleveland Leader poem in which a woman puts away bike and bloomers for the snow, longs for a climate of smooth dry roads and plentiful fellows, and observes that in a longer skirt she has not forgotten how to flirt.
- A New York Evening Telegram poem to 'The Rose Tree' painting a bicycle girl in high colour -- lips redder than cherries, eyes as blue as indigo ink, hair like glowing gold -- who rides in 2.10 and is a scorcher.
- A poem from Nuggets setting Lady Alice on her bike above every vehicle of fashion -- the Athenian two-wheeled cart, the Roman chariot, the Persian camel, the Versailles sedan chair, the Russian drosky and the Irish jaunting car.
- A Judge squib built on ditto marks: she used to darn the baby's hose and her husband's, but now darns not at all, wheels by night and day, and has not learned the proper way to lift her bloomers out of the wet.
- A Boston Courier six-liner on a rider in a costume a la mode who threw a gleam of sunshine on the pike, beat the trolley car, and whose 'golden hair was hanging down her bike'.
- A Washington Star parody of Burns's 'A Man's a Man for a' That' allowing the lassie her breeks and braw bloomers, and her voice in the council hall, while insisting she bides a lass for a' that.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox's narrative in The Sun: the boy bossed by parents, brother and a small maid is given a wheel, becomes Emperor, Sultan and Czar of the pavement, and meets a cable car's fender -- 'I went up like a rocket and down like a peg.'
- Peter Grant's poem in the Chicago Record refusing to join the throng crowding the rumbling street cars, since street-car heaters are a delusion and the steed of summer will bear him safely through mud-streaked snow five inches deep.
- A poem signed 'V. E. S.' in Cycling, in four stanzas with a recurring refrain, on winter riding -- the sun coronetting snow-laden trees, the moonlit silvered world, the crunch of tires and the flight through blinding sleet.
- Margaret E. Sangster's two stanzas of a girl rider's exultation in cool winds, morning dew and sunset light, closing 'Queen of the world of girlhood, and sovereign of all I see'.
- Karl H. Wisewell's poem in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: three scorchers hustle down the street pursued by the coppers, and three corpses are jounced away by the ambulance -- 'for fools must scorch, and fools must hump'.
- W. P. French's narrative ballad in the Irish Cyclist: the curate of Slowford-on-Slough buys his wife a bike, Mrs. M'Fidget and Mrs. M'Fad raise a crusade against 'this she-dragon on wheels', the rector preaches on the Powers of the Air, and the machine has to be sold at a loss.
- A Cycling World poem borrowing the Maori Queen's name for the bicycle -- whiro-porowhita, 'the devil's wheel' -- and recommending it as the neatest of all the machine's titles despite its savour of the pit.
- Nixon Waterman's Longfellow parody in the L.A.W. Bulletin: one lamp if you stay and two if we flee; a second lamp burns in the window, the pair flee by tandem, and the father on horseback cannot keep their pace.
- A Detroit Journal quatrain: told that the wheel would relieve his blues, the rider found after a week that he was still blue, 'with black somewhat largely combined'.
- A Chicago Record quatrain printed without a heading in the text and titled in the contents: Hamlet's 'Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay' is quoted only to conclude that for patching up a tire it is rubber, not dead Romans, that we desire.
- A New York World parody of 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' with a hip pocket full of rye and four-and-twenty nips taken on the sly, ending in a household of spills -- host inflating a tire, hostess in the ditch, daughter tangled in her chain.
- A Cleveland Leader poem: his sweetheart cannot ride in winter, but her wheel stands on the mantel-piece bedecked with silken bands, is praised by all who see it, and so her fame spreads and she is glad.
- A Yonkers Statesman catalogue of things being blown up -- boulders by giant powder, pneumatic sleeves, the baker's crumpets, the milkman's trumpets, the cook's 'missus', the father's fire, and the bloomered daughter's tires.
- A poem from Fun rewriting 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' with pockets on the thigh and four-and-twenty hat pins: the King in his counting house, the Queen in the ambulance, and the bobby asking 'Ain't she barked her nose?'
- A Chicago Record eight-liner: the little lamp Mary used on her wheel never seemed big enough to reveal the dangers, but now in winter it sheds rays in her parlour and she says it is just right.
- A poem from The American Wheelman answering pulpit complaints that Sunday cycling empties the pew: it takes riders from the club, the pot-house and the street to woods, meads and village greens, and may lead them back to their knees and fill the pews anew.
- A Bearings fantasy on what the ancients would have done with the bike -- Hector tied to Achilles' wheel, Aristotle 'peripateting' on a four-lap track, Socrates pedalling from his sharp wife, Eve in bloomers -- closing 'They didn't have the bike; they had the gods.'
- A Washington Times six-liner: Polly rode her cycle exposing more than just her toes, and her mother caught her and whipped her for wheeling in such shamefully short clothes.
- George Lynde Richardson's poem in Outing spoken by the wheel -- tyrant of the woodland road, Mercury of the street, known in the defiles where Khundish bandits wait and at Bagdad's gate -- declaring itself 'the balanced, whirling, swift, still Spirit of To-day'.
- Ernest Neal Lyon's diptych in the New York Sun, dated 1796 and 1896: gentle Mistress Dorothy spinning wool beside her wheel, and Dot in dizzy tie, Fedora hat and scarlet bloomers scorching down the Boulevard 'astride her spinning wheel'.
- A Puck ballad on Miss Jane Penelope Brewster of Plymouth descent, who scandalises Beacon Street by riding through the Back Bay Fens, takes to bloomers and centuries, grows plump and well, and marries the man all her old set had hoped to get.
- A New York Evening Telegram poem in which beetle, frog, katydid, cricket, ladybug, mud hen, whip-poor-will and fireflies all mourn, until a wood sprite explains: 'They're mad 'cause they can't ride a wheel.'
- A poem signed 'Bike Loride' in the New York Sun claiming that the lately deceased chimpanzee of the New York Zoo set the fashion, its curvilinear vertebral column being the model for the bicycle spine.
- A Somerville Journal poem in chiming rhymes -- fleet, petite, complete -- on a trim rider whose shy glance at an elegant stranger ends in an upset and a romance over forever.
- A Washington Times updating of 'Where are you going, my pretty maid': the pair ride through sylvan shade and loiter in a mossy glade until she must go, because 'my husband may want his wheel'.
- H. E.'s nine-line poem in the L.A.W. Bulletin on the pedestrian who trips half across the street, turns back in time to meet the oncoming cyclist, and leaves him in the gutter: 'She who hesitates is lost.'
- A New York Herald poem on jolly mileage between earth and sky, with the admission that if wheel and rider should flirt a little with a passing bloomer girl, there is nobody to tell.
- An L.A.W. Bulletin parody of Tennyson's 'Break, break, break' on a road of mud as far as the eye can see, and the joy of a nice, hard, level road that can never come back.
- A Cleveland Leader burlesque of Tennyson's ballad: Lord Ronald buys Lady Clare a high-grade wheel which leaps like a Texas steer, skins her shins and stands her on her ear, but she vows to ride the critter or her name will not be Lady Clare.
- A Boston Courier poem in which Galileo returns to earth, sees maids, matrons, sires and sons whirling on every thoroughfare and prairie road, and declares that he knew it moved but never thought it would move like that.
- A San Francisco Examiner poem on the anti-bicycle campaigner Charlotte Smith, who stands 'Good-Lording and O-mying' in the path of the soundless wheels until Miss Charlotte Smith is a smithereen.
- A Springfield Monitor five-liner on two maiden aunts who longed for one chance to ride a bike along the pike, but drew the line at bloomers.
- A Cleveland Plain Dealer quatrain: the man who scorched down the avenue with a wild and reckless air now bears a campaign torch and scorches off his hair.
- A Cleveland Leader monologue in irregular short lines: the scorcher invites the reader to observe the curve of his spine, hates to kill folks but will do it just the same unless they clear the track.
- A Japan Mail tirade in cockney dialect against the bike as vulgar, dangerous and vain-making -- a 'orrid mixture of a treadmill, an umbrella frame and a length of garden hose, with twenty ways of falling down.
- A Boston Courier eight-liner: she has won her rights and no longer depends on a bathing dress to show her form, baring her upper charms at the dance and the lower ones on her wheel.
- A Chicago Record quatrain: Mary's little wheel wabbled so at random that she gave it up and coaxed a man to haul her on a tandem.
- A Troy Daily Press poem set in the future, looking back at the bicycle standing cobwebbed behind the barn door: grandpapa rode the strange old thing and young people even courted upon whirling wheels, but now wings beat the wheels for ease and grace.
- An Indianapolis Journal quatrain: Willie's broad smile is explained by his bicycle suit being two sizes too small to be worn by his athletic sister.
- A Buffalo Express quatrain: he used to live in peace, but his house is now filled with roomers so his wife can earn the money for a bike and a pair of bloomers.
- An Atlanta Constitution poem in dialect: love has taken in school and the sky beams brighter, but Jinny rides a bicycle and the lover follows at a gallop on a mule.
- A Chicago Record eight-liner: a little mermaid weeps on a cold damp rock because, having no feet, she is the victim of a cheat and cannot ride a bicycle.
- A four-line squib from Scottish Nights: a girl can ride a wheel all day and still be sweetly cheery, but cannot sew a button on because it makes her weary.
- A Judge quatrain: good Santa Claus may well grow wild and go out on a strike if every woman, man and child insists on wanting a bike.
- A Yonkers Statesman quatrain-pair: the girl who used to walk a block and exclaim 'my shoe's untied' now simply reminds you that 'my tires need more air'.
- A Boston Courier six-liner: two riders in garb of rare similitude speed past their own gate, and their offspring tells a stranger 'Look, mister! There go my two poppers.'
- A Cleveland Leader quatrain adapting Ella Wheeler Wilcox: 'Bike, and the world bikes with you; walk, and you walk alone' -- and you cannot get into society without a wheel of your own.
- A Boston Courier quatrain playing on 'bent': he was bent on having a wheel, bought one, and his daily feats have now made the bend chronic.
- A Chicago Record quatrain: the girl who wheels down the road in a gay mood at morning steals into town at dusky eve perched aloft on a load of hay.
- A Boston Courier quatrain explaining that she is not out biking because rumour says the goat ate Mamie's bloomers off the clothesline yesterday.
- A Chicago Dispatch quatrain: the scorcher set a pace to cause regret, met a farmer's heavy load, died, 'and may be scorching yet'.
- A Somerville Journal quatrain: Mary and her little lamb have long been dead, and if Mary were alive to-day she'd want a wheel instead.
- An L.A.W. Bulletin quatrain quoting Tennyson's 'Break, break, break' to introduce the unsettled controversy over whether a cycle should carry a brake at all.
- A Detroit Tribune quatrain punning on 'struck': he wheeled into the country for the pure air, and in that rugged landscape even he was much struck by the scenery.
- A Cleveland Leader quatrain on 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star': have you bikes up where you are, and are prices in the sky as high as they are on earth?
- A Chicago Record quatrain-pair: both have the cycle craze and neither the cash, until gifted Florinda proposes they blow in their engagement rings and get some wheels and whirl.
- A Cleveland Plain Dealer quatrain: he thought her his, but the watching rival went straight and bought a tandem, and of course that settled it.
- A Chicago Record quatrain: Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater had a wife and couldn't keep her, so he hid her bloomers, bike and bell and then kept her very well.
- Two quatrains under one heading, from Truth and the L.A.W. Bulletin: Mary's wheel was sure to go when she put her bloomers on, and the wheel she fondly trusted one sad day ran away and was busted.
- A Springfield Monitor six-line catalogue of a spill -- a girl, a wheel, a shock, a squeal, a header, a thump, a bloomer all torn and a maiden forlorn.
- A Cleveland Press quatrain: the scorcher scorched with all his might with his head over the handle bars, the brewery wagon hove in sight, and 'go ask the winds where the scorcher went'.
- J. A. Koons's closing quatrain in the L.A.W. Bulletin about a man who thought he knew a thing or two about a wheel, mounted one and rode away -- 'so this is all I have to say.'
Images in this book 2 pictures from 172 pages
Illustrations 2
(opens in a new tab) Lyre and bicycle cover emblem 
(opens in a new tab) Bicycle emblem