Vol 2, No 36
Articles in this issue
- The first of a series, subtitled "That a Bicyclist is a Cad." It concedes that 'Arry on his three-years-system velocipede wakes the echoes of English villages with an ill-tuned bugle and coarse phrases, but protests that the rider who has warned a district of a fire by night, fetched the doctor and pulled mail-carts out of ruts is condemned for nothing but riding, and looks to the well-bred woman on her tricycle to break the prejudice.
- The standing banner over the Club's official business, heading the Committee's report of Monday the 3rd instant and the Captain's notice about the Annual Dinner.
- At the meeting of Monday the 3rd instant one new member, a merchant of Poets' Road, was elected on the proposal of R. H. Curtis and E. Meyer, and the resignation of Mr. A. A. Weir was accepted.
- A few tickets remain for the dinner of November 26th. W. A. Smith reports well of the music, the Orchestral Society having promised its aid and a glee party being formed, and the President will take the chair; the manager of the Pall Mall Restaurant wants the Club's custom permanently. M. D. Rucker, Junr. adds that it is the last time he will meet the members as Captain, a post he has held for three years.
- A skit signed "Goethe" proposing that Club officers be elected by examination, with specimen papers: an Entrance paper ("Are you 'good' for two guineas?", added by the Treasurer), a Rules paper on the club colours and badge, a History paper on the first Captain and the first Gazette, and a Natural Philosophy paper asking the candidate to distinguish a "Carver" from a "Stassen." For the captaincy he offers a single test-question: "Are you Martin D. Rucker, Jun.?"
- W. A. Smith asks members willing to help with the musical entertainment at the annual dinner to lay aside their modesty and write to him: only three gentlemen have so far offered, and he wishes to keep the affair to members only.
- Continued: Norman B. Morris leaves Jennings behind ill at the "Hotel Nicolet" and takes the party by Podensac, oysters from Arcachon, and a tale of a French army paving 150 miles in one night, to Langon and Bazas, where the pavé forces them to walk. Then Castel-Jaloux, the flat sandy Landes into a flea-ridden auberge at St. Justin, and by Villeneuve-de-Marsan, Aire and Garlin to the first sight of the Pyrenees, Pau, and a run over the Val d'Ossau to Louvie-Juzon.
- The Special Correspondent climbs, guided by an attendant devil, to the composing room of Darling & Son's Minerva Steam Printing Office in Eastcheap, explaining that a "chapel" is a band of compositors. "Father" Mr. Marsh is lord of the galleys, sidesticks, fat and pie; sub-editor Maclean, "most cheery of teetotallers and kindest of candid critics," is hailed as the Archbishop of the Chapel without whom the Gazette would be a colander of ill-spelt holes.
- R. M. Gruggen and Barry leave Richmond at 4.30 a.m. on Saturday 16th August on two nickel-plated "Clubs" of 56 and 54 inches from the Coventry Machinists' Company, fight a S.W. gale by Crawley and Brighton and catch the Newhaven boat with minutes to spare. Two days are then lost at Dieppe arguing a 19-franc customs bill down to nine, before a wet ride over sticky chalk to the old inn at Totes, half way to Rouen.
- "Shanks" borrows an "Extraordinary" at Exeter for the eleven miles to lunch at Exmouth. Two miles out a treadle works loose, catches the spokes and cuts five of them through like twine; the machine goes back to Exeter by carrier's cart and he runs the last eight hilly miles in exactly an hour, offered as a warning always to see that treadles are securely fastened.
- The season's last review takes "The 'Humber,'" built by Messrs. Humber, Marriott and Cooper of Nottingham, Humber the practical engineer, Cooper the one-mile professional champion. It goes point by point over the 4 1/2-inch "Stanley" head, the broad bayonet-shaped hollow drawn steel forks, the graceful curved backbone, the seventy stout spokes recommended, the lever spoon brake, the new small-calibre double ball bearings, and red rubber tyres that do not seem to wear very well.
- Eavesdropper reports A. P. Stokes writing from Suez of the "Glenorchie" losing her steering chain while bearing down on the disabled P. & O. "Australian" and grazing her stern; Thorn beaten by only four yards in the Fifty Miles Race; the L.B.C.O.S. finding a practice room in time to play after dinner on the 26th; and how the printer's devils caught Eavesdropper on the Chapel stairs and made him pay the absent Editor's footing as well as his own.
- "Telegraphesa" of Arctic Villa, N.W., writes on November 6th to preserve a gem for immortality, a limerick about an old party of Deal who thought he could ride on a wheel and came such a cropper that he used a big D with a squeal.