Vol 2, No 6
Articles in this issue
- A wheelman's travel sketch of Andover, Massachusetts, touring Phillips Academy, Abbot Academy (under Principal Miss Philena McKeen), and the Theological Seminary, the town's Puritan and witchcraft-era history, and a bicycle run onward to Whittier's birthplace near Haverhill and along the Merrimac to Newburyport.
- Greylock's short poem posing a series of 'Dost thou...' questions about love of the brooklet, the robin, the mountains and stars, and of God.
- Greylock's four-stanza poem voiced in turn by a mad cascade, a sparkling brook, an ancient pine, and a flower.
- 'Forsitan' of Cambridge, Mass. tells of a bicyclist who takes an unfamiliar branch road, is caught in a storm, and shelters overnight at an isolated country house complete with a telephone, only to find on a later visit that the house, road, and iron gate have all vanished.
- President Bates's poem imagining a disembodied soul that, freed from the body, perceives the unspoken thoughts of the widow, orphans, and friends mourning at its own deathbed.
- William Sloane Kennedy surveys the Harvard Athletic Association's sports (football, lacrosse, hare-and-hounds, lawn tennis, the bicycle club founded 1879) and describes Dr. Dudley A. Sargent's new Hemenway Gymnasium and his graduated system of prescribed exercise.
- Ninon Neckar's poem in which a dying rider bids farewell to a friend, likening the darkening road ahead to the approach of death and a reunion 'on a better road than's here.'
- 'Viator' gives practical advice on maintaining a bicycle or tricycle -- tires, bearings, nickel plating, storage, rail transport, and repairs -- comparing the machine to a horse deserving a groom's care.
- James D. Dowling of Philadelphia's poem on the exhilaration of a dawn bicycle ride through rising mist, birdsong, and a hilltop view before the homeward coast.
- Installment (chapters XXII-XXIV) of Charles Richards Dodge's serial: Wellford Manning and Charles Wilson sail from Paris to America pursuing Ruth Mayne; in New York the artist Grace sits for a visit from Doctor Frederick Mayne, in Boston Wilson clashes with the scheming Ned Hoyt, and in Washington, D.C., Wellford rides with the Bicycle Touring Club to Cabin John Bridge before Wilson glimpses Ruth being escorted from the opera by George Thorne.
- Arthur Penfield's brief two-stanza poem likening the 'flying wheel' and 'clod of clay' to the vanity of life ending in dust.
- Rev. Marcus D. Buell argues that ministers need robust physical health for pulpit work, citing Bismarck, Gladstone, and Wellington, and describes his own bicycle tour from Brooklyn through Rondout, Albany, Pittsfield, and Springfield to Boston.
- Installment (chapters I-V) of 'Minimum''s serial in which Mildred Linthrop, nicknamed 'Trailing-arbutus,' visits her cousin Jennie Exton in Chicago, survives a railway accident, and is courted by the wealthy Burke Leighton despite her wary reserve.
- A poem addressing the bicycle as a living, faithful companion carrying the rider through woods, by the sea, and 'o'er the lea'; signed with a badly garbled byline that the contents page renders as 'M. F. Tyler.'
- J. F. McClure surveys wheeling conditions city by city on a circuit from Worcester and Springfield through Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, and St. Louis, then back through Ohio to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York.
- President Bates's hunting yarn, told first from the boys' side and then from the raccoon's, of a Michigan hunting dog named Bruin tracking down the notorious giant raccoon that had long raided settler Sprague's abandoned cornfield.
- Karl Kron proposes that THE WHEELMAN's bound volumes be furnished with an elaborate classified 'local index' of places, contributors, and 'Roads, Tours, and Excursions,' and announces his own forthcoming book, 'Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle.'
- Alfred B. Starey traces the growth of American lawn tennis and the United States National Lawn Tennis Association, and describes the volleying style introduced by English champion W. Renshaw and adopted by American players such as Dr. James Dwight and R. D. Sears.
- Editorials on the poor state of American roads compared with England and Canada, and on Americans' relative reluctance, next to the English, to take up touring on foot or wheel.
- Club and racing roundup including an obituary for Connecticut L.A.W. consul S. A. Marsden, the League's road-sign stencil code, programmes for the Ohio and Springfield meets, English and French racing results, and a note on the bicycle's introduction into China.
- Reviews of recent books including Saintsbury's 'French Lyrics,' Stepniak's 'Underground Russia,' Thwing's 'The Reading of Books,' Topelius's 'Times of Battle and of Rest,' King's 'Dictionary of Boston,' Humphreys' 'Gettysburg to the Rapidan,' and the C.T.C. Handbook and Guide, plus minor notices and recent fiction.