Vol 1, No 4
Articles in this issue
- "A Country Parson"'s comic story, told in five "Spokes," of Deacon Noah Higgins of Ridgeville, whose nervous decline leads Dominie Morehouse and his wife Abigail to secretly buy him a bicycle, and who suffers a wild, Ezekiel-inspired vision of a living winged wheel-creature before the machine restores his health.
- Karl Kron's day-by-day account of an 1882 bicycle tour from Utica, New York, through the Genesee, Susquehanna and Wyoming valleys to Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, logging road conditions, hotel rates and cyclometer mileages.
- Charles Richards Dodge's short poem of an autumn ride out of town on a bicycle, racing the falling leaves until rider and wheel find themselves ten miles from home.
- "President Bates"'s comic sketch of a bicycle club's rival factions debating whether baby Tonish Bumps resembles his mother or father, resolved when the club president declares the infant looks like "the club" itself.
- Charles Richards Dodge's serial (Chapters I.-II.): in Rome, Englishman Wellford Manning buys a mysterious woman's photograph that obsesses him, and while touring with American Edwin Hoyt he traces her likeness to artist Grace Thorne and her brother George, met by chance in rural France.
- Joseph W. Chapman's poem personifying Love as a handsome young wheelman who charms the maidens as he rolls along the lanes, with a warning that Cupid hides beside the way with his bow.
- An essay signed "A Senior" surveying the bicycle's growing utility for businessmen, physicians and clergy in America and its wider adoption in England, Coventry and on the Continent, and its likely role in improving American roads.
- "A Country Parson"'s sequel to "Deacon Noah's Vision": Dominie Morehouse's tricycling daughter Huldah, frightened one evening by a stranger in the Tolman woods, is eventually reunited with Charles Lawrence, her fiance long thought lost at sea, at Judge Bent's newly furnished house.
- "Minimum"'s serial (Chapters V.-VIII.): painter Max Ehrlebach pursues Chicago travelers Rose Madder and her chaperone Kate Larkin after they slip ashore at Queenstown, bicycling from Liverpool toward Holyhead to intercept them.
- W. O. Owen of the Laramie Bicycle Club describes the first bicycle crossing of the Rockies, a ninety-mile ride with fellow club vice-president C. S. Greenbaum through Dale Creek Canon and La Porte to Loveland in July 1882.
- F. H. Houghton, a country parson in Salem, Washington County, New York, recounts being presented with an English "Salvo" tricycle by his parishioners, inscribed on its axle plate, and the delight and health it brings to his pastoral rounds.
- An essay arguing the bicycle is the ideal exercise for overworked clergymen, superior to the horse, walking, croquet, tennis, baseball or boating, for restoring health and enabling pastoral visiting.
- A roundup, compiled by C. A. Hazlett, of American clubs' long-distance day-runs in autumn 1882, topped by the AEolus Wheel Club of Worcester's 179 miles, and including the Boston Bicycle Club's pioneering 102 1/4-mile run and the Lawrence Bicycle Club's 169-mile ride.
- Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson, reprinted from "Good Words," advises on diet, drink, dress and after-ride care for tricyclists, condemns alcoholic stimulants, cites Marriott's 180-mile Derby-to-Holyhead ride, and commends the exercise to lady riders.
- P. De Villers, former editor of Le Sport Velocipedique, opens a history of French velocipedism from Lallement's 1867 Paris debut through the 1869 Paris-Rouen race and the Franco-Prussian War's toll on the sport; to be continued.
- Signed "Crank," a survey of Canadian cycling's rapid growth in Ontario clubs at Toronto, Hamilton and London, and the founding of the Canadian Wheelmen's Association at meetings in Toronto and St. Thomas in place of L.A.W. affiliation.
- Reprinted from "The Cyclist," Dr. Henry Belcher of Brighton, England, compares tricycles he has ridden and tested - the Meteor, Special Fleet, Salvo, Fleet, Humber, Coventry Rotary and Cheylesmore - and recommends shortening the crank throw for lady riders.
- An editorial, "An American Edition," faults Henry Sturmey's added American section of his "Indispensable Bicyclist's Handbook" for its thin, inaccurate and one-sided trade coverage, plus a note that Edwin Oliver of the Citizens' Club has bought an interest in The Wheel.
- Roundup including the Massachusetts Division L.A.W.'s officers' meeting and its letter to non-member wheelmen, the snow-disrupted Capital Bicycle Club Thanksgiving meet in Washington, the disputed Frye-Prince professional-amateur race, and fancy riding at the Columbia Bicycle School and the Kings County Wheelmen's ball.
- Reviews of Phil Robinson's "Under the Sun" (with a preface by Edwin Arnold), Jane G. Austin's "Nantucket Scraps," C. A. Stephens's "The Knockabout Club Alongshore," and the anonymous "A Strange Journey," set in Egypt and the Soudan.