Bassett's Scrap Book, Vol 11, No 6
Articles in this issue
- The opening column defends August's reputation against nay-sayers who'll miss it by February, with quips about gross darkness being 144 times darker than ordinary darkness and about riding a century run instead of sighing for airships.
- The column notes it's time to wind up the L.A.W. machine ahead of the Sept. 11 National Assembly, recalls the era of 62- and 64-inch wheels, and relays Mr. Bartleet's view (and a rebuttal by "Scorcher" in the Irish Cyclist) on why bicycle racing has slumped since promoters stopped being "matey" with racing men. It goes on to compare 1903 and 1913 membership of the Ligue Internationale des Associations Touristes' three leading clubs — the Touring Club de France, the C.T.C., and the Touring Club Italiano — concluding the Anglo-Saxon race may be losing vitality, and gives details of the L.A.W.'s annual dinner (Sept. 11, City Club, Boston) that precedes the National Assembly meeting.
- The annual Wheel About the Hub tour's usual stopping places (Massapoag House, Kimball's at Cohasset, and the Tudor-Farm Club, burned July 21) have all been lost to fire, with new plans for a grove near Canton, a hotel at Mansfield, and a wind-up at Pemberton Inn.
- A humorous poem advising against swearing, warning that profanity only makes mishaps such as snapped shoelaces, mashed thumbs and slipping razors worse.
- League member No. 1127 writes that he and his wife jokingly call their regular ride to a local Hub Lake their own 'Wheel About the Hub'; a short verse notes that a sweltering August makes April's cold seem mild by comparison; and the column announces the death of Frank A. Peavey of Port Huron, Mich., L.A.W. Life member No. 64 and a good-roads worker who helped President H. S. Earle build a mile of macadam road at Port Huron in 1900, born at Marshall, Mich., on June 22, 1860.
- A mouse that fell into a puddle of whiskey in a wine cellar staggers off yelling for 'that coward of a cat that chased me yesterday'; an eighty-two-year-old Irish cyclist has ridden the same solid-tired, front-steering tricycle for thirty-three years; during a storm at Elgin, Ill., a motorcycle's engine was belted to a newspaper press to keep the paper running when the electric power failed (Technical World Magazine); and a Trevarthen anecdote in the C.T.C. Gazette tells of a bishop whose carriage, stuck fast in a muddy road, was freed by the driver's 'jolly good cursing' only after the bishop discreetly walked on ahead.
- Preceded by a note that L. J. Berger, a cycling editor since the sport's early days, is now editor and publisher of the fortnightly Pacific Motorcyclist in Los Angeles, the item summarizes a Bureau of the Census bulletin (Director Durand) showing bicycle output falling from 1,182,691 in 1899 to 233,707 in 1909 while motorcycle output rose from 160 to 18,628, and traces the bicycle's perfection into the modern "safety" between 1890 and 1895.
- Summarizes a London lecture on parody, from crude verbal echoes ('The girl sat on the frying pan') to true parody as 'grotesque exaggeration of the original theme,' citing Calverley's parody of 'The Heathen Chinee' and of 'When the Rudyards cease from Kipling' (itself later reworked as a musical-comedy verse about Ivan Caryll and Reuben Paul), and closing with a stray one-line joke about a 'summer girl' who says she can be hugged 'in the arms of the dear old ocean.'
- The official notice that the National Assembly's annual meeting, for the election of officers and League business, will be held at the City Club, Boston, on Thursday evening Sept. 11, with the annual dinner ($1.00) the same date at six o'clock, signed by Abbot Bassett, Secretary-Treasurer.
- The annual statement of ownership required under the Act of Congress of Aug. 24, 1912, again names Abbot Bassett as editor, managing editor, business manager and owner of the monthly published at Newtonville, Mass., sworn before notary public Wm. T. Halliday on July 18, 1913.