Bassett's Scrap Book, Vol 11, No 4
Articles in this issue
- The June opening column evokes the season's roses and birdlife alongside bicycles, motor-cycles and cars, notes that the magazine's 33rd birthday passed quietly, and announces the June 9, 1913 marriage of Barbara Kilby, daughter of L.A.W. President Quincy Kilby, to Dr. Henry Bayard Phillips of Boston.
- Abner T. Jones of Philadelphia recalls learning to ride the velocipede on July 4, 1868 at Smith's Island on the Delaware River and racing at the Bi-Centennial with George D. Gideon as starter; and the Essex Bicycle Club of Newark, N.J.—organized in 1879 and now some forty members strong—holds its annual dinner, electing President W. S. Righter, Vice-President Herbert W. Knight and Secretary-Treasurer Benjamin J. Coe.
- Report of the Rovers' Cycle Club's twenty-seventh annual dinner at the B. A. A. Club House, Boston, on May 3d, with guests including L. A. W. President Quincy Kilby and Secretary Abbot Bassett, singing by Dr. Gould and Mr. Ballard, stories from humorist Mr. McHugh, and the election of officers led by President Thomas H. Hall.
- Notes that the Newton Bicycle Club will hold a 'Ladies' Night' on July 11 at the Point Shirley Club in Winthrop as guests of President Fuller, then reports that the Keystone Bicycle Club of Pittsburgh, Pa.—organized by thirteen men in July 1879 and among the few pre-1880 clubs still active—drew more than a hundred to its April 7th reunion, including members Frank C. Orr and Charles W. Houston.
- Responding to Charles M. Read's 'Weekday Shut-ins' letter in the New York Tribune, L.A.W. member James M. McGinley defends cycling as a lost art of the 1880s-90s, arguing gasoline and complicated machinery are unnecessary for health and that twenty-five years of riding across the U.S., Canada and Europe have taught him no other way finds the 'common touch' so well.
- Reports a movement, under L.A.W. auspices, to bring together all the bicycle clubs now active in and around Boston—including the Boston, Newton, Rovers, Massachusetts and Roxbury clubs—for a fall banquet open to non-club members, with suggestions to be sent to President Kilby or Secretary Bassett; it also notes that C. W. Reed the artist and Sterling Elliott, maker of addressing machines, have both taken their wives abroad this year.
- Preceded by a note that famous track cyclist Nat Butler has built a new racing track at Revere Beach, Wm. T. Wintringham, L. A. W. No. 12, writes that a poem in the December Scrap Book moved him, and offers his own twisted version of it reflecting his shift from the wheel to a six-cylinder car.
- In his Irish Cyclist column, 'Scorcher' riffs on the modern craze for baths—an English friend who keeps his bicycles in the bathroom for lack of other use, and an Irish hotelier's complaint that Americans insist on private bathrooms they never use but are glad to pay for—before signing off to take his own midnight bath with mustard, salad oil, pepper and salt.
- Prompted by news of A. H. Griffith resigning as director of the Detroit Museum of Art, Bassett recalls the L. A. W. annual meet held in Detroit in 1891 and the founding of a "Hickory Club" by Sterling Elliott, who handed out nickel Hickory bicycle badges; it closes with Chas. Fred Travis's wistful verse toast 'to the sport that is passing away' and Bassett's reply that as long as the League's ship floats, its old guard will stand by 'with our boots on.'
- O. M. Jefferds of New York, responding to a prior discussion of the earliest velocipede, writes that he traced a similar wagon-built machine to spring 1869 in East Randolph, N.Y., built by wagon makers Franklin & Champlin, describing its wooden wheels with iron tires, iron backbone and spindle-shaped pedals.
- Wm. Lord of New York City writes, in reply to the same discussion, that he built the first boneshaker in America, photographed on a tintype in the spring of 1868 in Webster, Mass., and reprints a 1912 New York newspaper account crediting his later cotton-fabric experiments—later validated by the Dunlop Tire Company—with advancing pneumatic tire manufacture.
- The nominating committee names League of American Wheelmen officers for 1913-14: President Quincy Kilby, 1st Vice President Wm. H. Hale, 2d Vice President George D. Gideon, Secretary-Treasurer Abbot Bassett, and Auditor George W. Nash.