Vol 5, No 4

Articles in this issue

• The Wheelman's Vision (opens in a new tab)

  An unsigned poem addressed to the steel steed, asking what voices of the night could reveal its prototypes, and setting the bicycle against the myths of Ixion's wheel, Phaeton's chariot and Fortune's disk.
• After the British on a Tricycle (opens in a new tab)

  Arthur Gilman's comic account of a Cambridge man who takes up the tricycle and, on the Fourth of July, rides the Menotomy road in imagined pursuit of the British retreat from Lexington and Concord, passing the Arlington monuments, Paul Revere and Professor Gould.
• Tangle-Leaf Papers. II (opens in a new tab)

  Maurice Thompson on the harmony of birds with their surroundings: the quail, grouse, hare, whippoorwill, dove, kingfisher and green heron, and how hawks and owls are fooled by colour and stillness.
• Down the Susquehanna in a Canoe (opens in a new tab)

  John Boyle O'Reilly's canoe trip from Binghamton to Harrisburg with Sigourney Butler, through rapids, a storm-driven run past Towanda, the singing beach near Athens and a night on a canal-boat, while lamenting the railroad-stripped hills and the shrinking river.
• A Misdirected Letter (opens in a new tab)

  Concluding part of Frances C. Sparhawk's Philadelphia story: Lottine learns she was invited to the house by mistake and offers to leave, while Eustace Holbrook proposes to the Quaker-costumed Lottie White against his father's wishes.
• A Dream of Summer (opens in a new tab)

  A poem by James Clarence Harvey in which the speaker rides westward at sunset through summer's golden glow, recalling summers past as winter sleet closes in.
• St. John's Eve (opens in a new tab)

  Edith M. Thomas's midsummer fairy poem: the speaker wears fern-seed to walk unseen to the linden trysting-tree and catches his lady's invisible hand, which she has also used the seed to hide.
• A Municipal Regatta in Boston Harbor (opens in a new tab)

  Albert H. Munsell's account of the Fourth of July yacht regatta off City Point, with four classes, a postponed start in a light easterly, the Magic, Shadow, Maggie and Mirvana, and the return past the judges' steamer.
• Through England Wide (opens in a new tab)

  A poem by Virna in which the speaker wheels through merrie England past ruined walls, ivied towers and flowering hedges, with the lark overhead.
• John Burroughs (opens in a new tab)

  Henry Litchfield West's profile of the naturalist: his boyhood on the Delaware County farms, his Washington years and the cow Chloe, the stone house he built near Esopus, and his essays, with a comparison of him to Thoreau and Whitman.
• A Fugue and a Wheel (opens in a new tab)

  Edward B. Getzé's New Year's Eve tale, told by the architect Carl Hensel: a bicycle trip to the Bellevue hotel in Pennsylvania, where a stranger whistles the theme of a fugue Carl has long treasured, leading to the Clay family, the manuscript and his marriage.
• A Night Run to the Shoals (opens in a new tab)

  William B. Livermore's account of the sloop Helena running from East Boston to the Isles of Shoals overnight: the tender's line parts and is recovered in a heavy sea, past Thacher's Island and White Island, and Gosport Harbor is reached at five in the morning.
• In El Dorado (opens in a new tab)

  Minna Caroline Smith's Chicago art-guild conversation between the painter Pinx and the writer the Scribbler about their California trip, the climb to Coloma, and an old vintner who first found gold there, which inspired Pinx's painting.
• Only a Girl (opens in a new tab)

  Ruth Hall's poem in which a girl glimpses a cyclist in Quaker gray on a frosty road, the dear boy gone out of sight before she can speak.
• The Wheelman's Song (opens in a new tab)

  A song in praise of the wheel, with words and music by William J. Stabler and three verses on riding through the shade, by the sea and at will, with a chorus 'I love my wheel'.
• Editor's Open Window (opens in a new tab)

  The editorial opening of the January number: the cold weather and the snows, roller-skating's rise against the decline of runner-skating in America, Christmas gifts for the wheelman and the yachtsman, steam-yachting and electricity as possible motive-power, and an invitation to visit the office on the Common.
• Glances at Our Letter-File (opens in a new tab)

  Correspondence to the editor: 'Tourist' on touring and Thomas Stevens's ride; Mrs B.'s objection to knickerbockers for lady tricyclists, answered by President Bates; a Chesapeake yachting cruise by James S. Reese; Trant on canoeing in winter; R. B. Forbes's 1853 yacht passage from Boston; 'Racer' on shifting ballast; and an English cricket club in Chicago.
• Among the Books (opens in a new tab)

  Reviews of the season's books: the Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, illustrated gift books including Leland's Algonquin Legends and Cable's Creoles of Louisiana, new novels, Lockers' and Heine's verse, and a half-dozen British wheeling pamphlets from Iliffe and Son.
• Our Monthly Record (opens in a new tab)

  A monthly round-up of bicycling and tricycling (L.A.W. membership, the proposed Chicago-Boston-New York-Buffalo tour, club races at Omaha, Bangor, Cleveland and Kansas City, Van Sicklen's record, British tandem and tricycle records), with canoeing (New York and Mohican clubs), resorts, tennis and yachting news.
• Amenities (opens in a new tab)

  A light department of verse and humour: 'A Few Hints for Huntsmen', a poem on tennis by Frank Dempster Sherman, 'A Photo-Gravure' on the amateur photographer Jones and a startled country woman, and 'A Legend of the A.D.T.' about district messengers who learn to ride slowly.
• The Publisher's Basket (opens in a new tab)

  Publisher's notices: subscription and advertising terms, New Year greetings, the start in March of Thomas Stevens's San Francisco to Boston series illustrated by W. A. Rogers, Volume IV for sale at $1.50, Foster's Wheel Songs, and a call for a snow-shoe club.