Vol 2, No 1
Articles in this issue
- C. A. Hazlett, president of the Rockingham Bicycle Club, opens a two-part account of the Piscataqua River between Maine and New Hampshire, tracing its history from Martin Pring's 1603 landing through the founding of Portsmouth, and closing with a club boating mishap near a bridge on a stormy night.
- Geo. E. Blackham's story of a physician whose old bicycle comes to life by the fireside and carries him through visions of his first wobbly lesson, a moonlit ride with a fellow doctor, and an imagined future of luminous, self-propelled electric wheels.
- S. Conant Foster's short verse pitting a horseman's scornful jab at cycling against the wheelman's retort that his 'cranky' wheel beats a sulky, whoa-prone horse.
- Charles Richards Dodge's illustrated verse in which Daisy teasingly accuses her sweetheart of loving his nickel-plated wheel more than her, before granting him one more kiss.
- John B. Marsh of London's West Kensington Tricycle Club recounts a 325-mile week-long tandem-tricycle 'Sociable' tour from Paris to Geneva through Montereau, Sens, Dijon, Tanlay and the Jura mountains, completed for about $34.
- An anonymous poem recalling a starlit winter ride shared under one muff with a sweetheart, its title punning on 'Sociable,' that ends with an engagement sealed by 'a pressure placed upon the brake.'
- John Preston True's rain-dogged wheeling tour from Norristown through West Chester, Downingtown, Lancaster, Marietta, Reading, Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton, calling on local wheelmen including patent-holder Capt. William Rennyson and rider Martin Rudy.
- Charles Richards Dodge's serial (Chapters IX.-XI.) follows Englishman Wellford Manning, injured racing his American friend Edwin 'Ned' Hoyt through Paris, whose photograph of the artist Grace Thorne leads to her formal introduction to the mysterious Doctor Frederick Mayne, the stranger who had earlier rescued her from ruffians, while his sister Ruth teases him about his new interest.
- James Clarence Harvey's comic poem about a wheelman who takes a header beneath his sweetheart's window and is nursed by her until the two marry.
- W. O. Owen recounts a sixty-mile round trip by three Laramie Bicycle Club members, Greenbaum, Sinclair and the writer, from Laramie, Wyoming to the mining camp of Cummins City in the Medicine Bow Mountains, including a prank in which club-mate Kirby strands two of the party at the bottom of a mine shaft.
- 'Minimum's' serial (Chapters XVII.-XVIII., "Distanced" and "Cycling") follows Kate Larkin, Rose Madder, the German traveler Ehrlebach, the caddish Jenkins and the shy Englishman Alden through London art galleries and a tricycle excursion to Windsor and Gray's grave at Stoke Poges.
- Karl Kron's statistics-laden account of his riding record on his Columbia bicycle 'No. 234' across four seasons (1879-82), tallying his longest single-day and multi-day rides, longest unbroken 'stays' in the saddle, and a spirited defense of drinking freely and coasting on tour.
- Readers' letters, including one signed 'Two-Thirty-Four' (Karl Kron) and another from an anonymous member of the Wheelman's Contributors' Club, debating the safety of coasting against Lieut. Williams's warnings in an earlier issue.
- The Wheelman's editors open Volume II and promote the bound Volume I and premium subscription list, then rebut at length Henry Sturmey's letter complaining that his 'English notions are up,' clarifying that the Pope Manufacturing Company and the Wheelman Company are separate concerns, denying any Pope bicycle 'monopoly,' and defending the validity of American bicycle patents.
- 'Jottings at the Stanley Show': a London correspondent's account of the Stanley Bicycle Club's annual show at the Albert Hall, noting tricycles now outnumbering bicycles among the Coventry-heavy exhibits and sightings of Henry Sturmey and editor Lacy Hillier working the floor.
- A roundup covering the Citizens' Bicycle Club of New York's new clubrooms, race meets at Chicago's Exposition Building and Boston's Institute Fair Building, C. A. Hazlett's letter resigning as New Hampshire L.A.W. Chief Consul, the Boston Bicycle Club's fifth annual dinner, a new Columbia tricycle's specifications, the Massachusetts Bicycle Club's fourth annual banquet and 1882 riding-record tally, and the death of L.A.W. first vice-president T. K. Longstreth.
- Reviews of George Saintsbury's 'A Short History of French Literature,' George S. Morris's critical exposition of Kant, Thomas Sedgwick Steele's 'Canoe and Camera' and 'Paddle and Portage,' Charles Lanman's 'Leading Men of Japan,' Henry James's 'The Siege of London, Etc.,' Zachris Topelius's 'Times of Gustaf Adolf,' James W. Steele's 'Frontier Army Sketches,' and the No-Name Series novel 'Barrington's Fate.'