Bassett's Scrap Book, Vol 10, No 7
Articles in this issue
- The seasonal opening banner declares September the finest cycling month of the year, then proposes that the bicycle world adopt the horse world's distinction between 'riding' (propelling yourself) and 'driving' (being propelled by an engine).
- The London Daily Mirror reports the aristocracy taking up cycling again on doctors' advice against the ill effects of motoring, an 'ordinary'-bicycle race features among the champions at Herne Hill, England, Sept. 14, and John A. Wherry (League No. 955, Pittsburgh) renews his membership at 75, writing he can still ride 'as well as a kid of ten.' Also: a new dynamo-powered bicycle lamp appears in Amsterdam, Milwaukee City Clerk Leuch objects to pillion-seat motorcycle riding as unsafe and 'indecent' after seeing fifteen youths racing through a city park with girls clinging to them, and old-timer George R. Bidwell, now with the Utility Car Co., writes regretting he can't attend the L.A.W. annual dinner.
- Tribute to Isaac B. Potter, ex-President of the L. A. W. and leader of the good-roads fight, reprinting his Aug. 15, 1912 letter from Los Angeles to Abbot Bassett recalling old League friends including A. G. Batchelder and Frank H. Kerrigan—now a judge of California's District Court of Appeals and formerly the state's Chief Consul during the stormy 1897 Sunday race-meet dispute.
- After Wilbur Wright's death, Wright Company directors Cornelius Vanderbilt, Theodore P. Shonts, Andrew Freedman and August Belmont asked Orville Wright to pledge never to fly again for the sake of aeronautical science; he declined, good-naturedly, and left the city.
- A poem in praise of the bicycle as the rider's chosen mount, with the refrain "When the sprockets purr / And the pedals whirr, / A wheel is the mount for me," by James Clarence Jones.
- Preceded by a jest about Assistant Secretary Adee's return from his annual bicycle trip in France (his 'tonic' is 'iron... in the form of a bicycle') and a New York Herald typo claiming he rode '1,800 moles,' the piece quotes the Irish Cyclist arguing the tricycle is the most suitable machine for riders over sixty and a fine touring mount, noting English crack riders who keep up on Anfield club runs on three-wheelers.
- H. G. Wolzendorf reports that eight St. Louis wheelmen — Wolzendorf, T. N. Davis, H. W. Lang, A. P. Laing, R. M. B. Tidd, Carl Lindenschmidt, Fred W. Hunicke and C. L. Barr — spent seven days touring Yellowstone Park by bicycle over dusty but good roads. Also: an English magistrate rules that a Chinese lantern merely hung by a string from a handlebar isn't legally 'attached' to the bicycle for lighting-law purposes, and automobilist Leigh Carpenter offers a tongue-in-cheek 'symphony' begging motorists not to 'joy-ride with other men's wives.'
- 'The Scorcher,' a columnist for the Irish Cyclist, recounts a comic game of hide-and-seek trying to catch up with Boston Bicycle Club President Kelley, who keeps vanishing — from Eastbourne to London to Ireland to Liverpool to Hamburg, with more stops threatened in Siberia, Constantinople, Andalusia or Aberdeen.
- Texas cow-puncher Henry E. Wood was so far ahead in a bicycle race from Houston to New York that he stopped to woo and marry Miss Florence Barry of Rochester, whom he met on his welcoming committee, before riding on as the certain winner; and illustrator Joseph Pennell, after a Boston sketching tour, returns to Philadelphia complaining the city is 'terribly flat' with 'no vistas,' prompting Bassett to call him a 'chronic kicker.'
- Profile of 25-year-old Eva Cressey of Gloucester, Mass., daughter of contractor Walter Cressey, who took personal charge of a Massachusetts Highway Commission road job at the entrance to the city and was praised for work worthy of a first-class engineer.
- Preceded by a note that the Princess Royal of Great Britain and her two daughters have taken up Humber bicycles, the piece recounts Thomas W. Davis of Peoria, Ill., L. A. W. Life Member 191, who took up cycling at age 60 on an "ordinary" and has covered over 140,000 miles, worn out eleven bicycles, and designed his own marble tombstone bearing a carved bicycle.