Bassett's Scrap Book, Vol 11, No 3
Articles in this issue
- The opening May 1913 editorial leader, a string of seasonal wheeling musings quoting Goldsmith on lingering winter and joking that bicycling is "exercise sugar-coated."
- The Boston Bicycle Club's 461st club run, on Patriot's Day, April 19, followed the usual route to the Reservoir and the Woodland Park Hotel for dinner, after which the members watched the Boston Marathon runners pass on their 25-mile stretch, noting how much the placings shuffled between that point and the finish.
- The Newton (Mass.) Bicycle Club held its annual meeting at Hotel Venice, Boston, on April 19th—old member E. P. Burnham (now of Hemet, Cal.) sent a jar of sun-ripened olives for the feast, and the club elected Herbert A. Fuller president, Frank A. Hoyt vice-president, A. P. Benson captain and Abbot Bassett secretary-treasurer; member W. I. Doty, now of Livermore, Cal., was noted as a new grandfather with the birth of Herbert Allen Doty in San Francisco on Jan. 25, 1912.
- Reports that Will R. Pitman came through a serious operation for an aching tooth and ulcerated tongue—glands removed and part of his tongue cut away—saying 'Happy Days' to his wife before going under, with cycling friends George B. Woodward and Dr. Willard placing their autos at his service during his illness.
- The Veteran Wheelmen's Association of Philadelphia held its annual reunion at the home of the Century Motor Club on April 18, billed as a 'vaudeville smoker'; Bassett imagines old-timers Tom Hare, Gideon, Boyle, Collins, Dimon and Morris with pipes, stories, songs and steins of beer.
- Frank P. Kendall of Worcester, Mass., an early worker for wheeling who served as Treasurer of the L.A.W. in 1885, passed away March 24th.
- Marking the League of American Wheelmen's 33rd anniversary on May 31st (it was founded at Newport in 1880), notes that three of the officers elected at that founding meeting remain on its roll—Commander Kirk Munroe, Corresponding Secretary Albert S. Parsons and Treasurer Hugh L. Willoughby—alongside George B. Woodward, H. B. Hart, E. W. Pope, E. K. Hill, Chas. S. McCulloch and Will R. Pitman.
- Preceded by a wry note that the Irish Cyclist has taken on the sub-title 'Motor Cyclist,' leaving the Scrap Book as about the only advocate of the man-driven machine, a humorous poem signed G. H. W. catalogues proverbial creatures nobody ever actually sees, from the camel whose back broke under the last straw to the dogs of war.
- Reprinting a Boston Transcript testimonial about L.A.W. member No. 392 (joined May 10, 1889), banker William H. Porter, who rose from a Fifth Avenue Bank clerk to vice-president of the Chase National Bank, then vice-president and later president of the Chemical Bank and of the New York Clearing House, and a partner of J. Pierpont Morgan.
- Quoting Raymond Raife's account of 'the oddest club I ever struck,' headquartered in a railway arch near London's Bow Road, whose members wore badges punched from Swiss milk-tin lids, rode machines with barely a sound tyre between them, and once competed for a bronze medal and a silk necktie in an annual championship.
- Notes the arrival of the Cyclist Touring Club's 1913 British Handbook and Guide and laments that little touring is done in America now that older riders have lost interest and younger ones take to the motor.
- A column of one-line quips, including that praising an actress to the skies won't make a star of her, that the living skeleton is the only man who doesn't want a fat job, and that one autoist was arrested for having no horn while another was arrested the same day for having too many.
- A light verse signed G. H. W. playing on long words that hide shorter ones, such as a "mile" in "smiles," a "continent" in "transcontinental," and the "world" within "unworldly."
- A column of overheard one-liners and puns, among them that a steak 'cuts like an infringement on the Goodyear patent' and that a man with his income 'has no more excuse for being in debt than the letter b.'
- One of Frank Sibley's stories: a Harvard student's cousin, up from western Massachusetts, comes back to the shared Cambridge room well after midnight thoroughly drunk, climbs into bed with the student and his roommate, and insists there are six feet in the bed before groping around and concluding there are only four.
- Lists further contributions to the yearly gift fund: $5 from H. S. Earle, $4 from Geo. M. Halsey and $1.50 from J. G. Linsley.