Vol 2, No 2
Articles in this issue
- Wm. O. Owen, of the Laramie Bicycle Club, narrates an August evening ride from Laramie City up to Sherman, Wyoming, the summit of the Union Pacific Railway crossing of the Rockies, past Dale Creek Canon, Harvard Mound, Castle Rock, Saddle Rock and the Ames Monument, with a perilous coast back down and a race against a freight train into Laramie.
- Edwin Oliver recounts the New York Citizens' Bicycle Club's October 1882 excursion to Boston as guests of the Massachusetts Bicycle Club, with runs to the Chestnut Hill reservoir, Harvard College and Col. Albert A. Pope's house in Newton, where "the doctor" takes a memorable header.
- Three unsigned sonnets, "In a Riding Rink," "Of Some Roads" and "A Senior's Intent", on a learner's first turns, selectmen's neglect of the roads, and an older rider's continuing devotion to the wheel.
- President Bates argues that the League of American Wheelmen's real strength is its latent political power, citing Ohio legislator Mr. Green's bill to curb bicyclists and its defeat after League pressure, and closing with the fable of the Arrogant Pilgrim and the Monkey.
- Chapters XII–XIII of Charles Richards Dodge's serial: Wellford Manning and Edwin Hoyt call on Doctor Mayne in Paris and meet his sister Ruth Mayne, while the doctor separately courts the art student Grace Thorne over her Salon ambitions.
- An unsigned reverie, signed "Chic," in which cigar-smoke rings conjure memories of a moonlit club run from Bryn Mawr, a chase after a ghostly "phantom wheel" along the Riverside, and a fairy sweetheart, before the last ring fades.
- Karl Kron logs, in mile-by-mile detail, a roughly 400-mile winter bicycle tour across New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts between late November 1882 and early January 1883, riding frozen and snow-covered roads from Harlem Bridge to Springfield and Hartford.
- Charles Richards Dodge's poem greets the coming of May, with larks and robins singing, and urges the wheelman to "mount and haste away."
- W. V. Gilman's late-night reverie, written from Nashua, New Hampshire, recalls summer outings on the steam launches "Marine," "Nashua" and "Portsmouth" on the Nashua River and musing on the coming L.A.W. elections.
- Extracts from a paper in "Good Words" by B. W. Richardson, of London, advising riders to choose a double-driving, front-steering tricycle with a band-brake, a level-geared forty-six-inch wheel, a saddle rather than a seat, horn handles, and ball bearings throughout.
- F. F. Drake, President of the Long Island Wheelmen, continues his mathematical analysis of bicycle safety, computing centrifugal force and curve-riding limits and the tensile strain on the hollow perch and steering-head for riders of different weights.
- Chapters XIX–XXII of "Minimum's" serial: Rose Madder and Kate Larkin follow the artist Ehrlebach to Carlsruhe and Heidelberg for a royal wedding, where at the castle Ehrlebach declares his love to Kate, ending the serial.
- President Bates retells, in Captain Hardrider's own words, how the club captain chased a yellow cur dog five miles at racing speed on his wheel, as first reported by the German bartender Hans.
- A correspondent signed "Burota" sends in the parody cycling songs of the St. Louis wheelmen's clubs (the E.B.C. and M.B.C.), including "Old Dog Tray," "On the Bollywar" and "Litoria," sung to popular tunes of the day.
- T. R. Willard describes a day's black-bass fishing on Pine Lake near Charlevoix, Michigan, including a near-swamping of his skiff by the excursion steamer and landing a leaping four-pound bass.
- Opens with a clipping on Ayrton and Perry's electric tricycle exhibited in Glasgow, followed by readers' letters recalling learning to ride a "boneshaker," Mr. Pitman's run-in with police while exhibiting a bicycle in Union Square, and a rider's account of bicycling despite inguinal hernia.
- Short editorials on "My Wheel" and on "Anglo-mania" (deploring slang like "bike" and "trike"), plus a note on the Belgian Minister of Public Works trialing bicycles for postmen and telegram-bearers.
- Club-news roundup covering the planned June tour "down East" through Maine, elections at the Springfield, Albany, Trumbull and Valley City clubs, the Springfield Bicycle Club's exhibition and ball starring Geo. M. Hendee, and English, German, French and other foreign notes.
- Reviews of Professor Watson's "Schelling's Transcendental Idealism," Jowett's translation of Thucydides, McMaster's "History of the American People," a five-volume "People's Edition" of Goethe, the novels "Nobody" and "Shandon Bells," Gilman's biography of James Monroe, Dumas' "Art Annual," Dean Bradley's recollections of Dean Stanley, and Julian Hawthorne's "Dust."