The American Bicycling Journal, Vol 1, No 12
Articles in this issue
- Opening leader paragraphs on the sudden death of the young rider Albert Wilcomb on the 17th inst., said by friends of the family to have had an organic affection of the heart; the "hot weather helmet" designed at Oak Hall for the B. Bi. C.; a count at Vossler's restaurant which found sixteen bicyclists among twenty-eight lunchers; and a prediction that American mechanics in earnest will improve on the best English bicycles.
- Reprinted from the "Boston Post": the Boston Bicycle Club was organized on 11 February 1878 by fourteen gentlemen, with George B. Woodward president, Frank W. Weston treasurer and secretary and Thacher Goddard captain, and now numbers twenty-seven; Weston rides the seven and a half miles from Quincy to his office in about forty minutes, the longest club run was that to Squantum on Fast day, and a three hundred mile New Hampshire trip in six days is projected for 20 May. Machines are all of English make at $75 to $150, and the Pope Manufacturing Company is about to establish a Hartford factory from which the first strictly American bicycle should come.
- Editorial reply rejecting a poem sent in by "Laura" as too crude and gushing to print, showing that her best verses ("Light as a leaf they step, or arrowy") are taken almost entire from "Festus" and another line is a parody of Addison, while allowing her own "Some little gleams of gladness" stanza some promise.
- Letter from the Journal's own London correspondent, dated 30 April 1878: wet Easter tours in which the Pickwick Club got only five members through and the Temple Club never reached twenty, against the Stanley Club's forty-strong opening run to Maidenhead. At the Molineux Grounds, Wolverhampton, the mile championship between John Keen and Fred Cooper fell through and G. E. Edlin of Leicester took the all-comers' handicap from fifty-three starters in 2m 40 1-2s; C. Benton won the Birmingham handicap, and at Kennington Oval A. E. Derkinderen of the Tower Hamlets B. C. beat W. Quirk of Kingston in the Surrey Club's four-mile handicap after Quirk's spill in the last circuit.
- Extract from "Sporting Life" advertising R. Lewis's six days' match, riding from six A. M. till eleven P. M., between the bicyclists Phillips, Rawson, White, Stanton, Cann, Patrick, Thomas and Markham and the horsemen Leon "the Mexican" and Newson of Beverly, Yorkshire, for £200 and a silver cup valued at £70.
- Short replies telling "Laura" she has been answered at length in another column and "J. Q. D." of Indiana to see the advertising columns, with thanks to the editor of "The Boston Herald" and a note that other answers and several interesting letters are held over for want of space.
- Announces that with this number the paper has been reduced one-half in size, recalling that it was started when a solitary rider here and there was all that represented bicycling in America and has been carried at a loss ever since, and appealing for new subscribers, news-stand and railway-station customers, correspondents and advertisers so that it may yet be issued weekly at five cents and returned to its original size.
- The B. Bi. C.'s ninth club run, on Saturday 11 May from Trinity Church, abandoned Arlington for a run to windward through the roads north of Jamaica Pond and Forest Hills to Mattapan; the tenth run of 18 May left Trinity Church at 3.15 and reached West Newton at 4.25 over lumpy, dusty roads, part of the club going on westerly and the rest returning by Brighton and the Milldam. The club will probably suspend its weekly runs after this month in favour of long Saturday-to-Monday runs started from members' own homes.
- Comic poem in Bret Harte's metre, subtitled "By One Who Is (Bret) Harte-ily Tired of It" and signed "Faed" of the London Institute B. C., in which the rider's leather boot-lace comes untied, winds tighter round the axle at every revolution and drops him sideways on his head.
- "B."'s account of a day's run made by three riders, one on his newly bought "Duplex Excelsior" and two on wire horses lent by the Pope Manufacturing Company, starting from Columbus Avenue at eight o'clock: a companion is thrown in the mud on the Eustis Street cobbles and turns back, and the other two go by Dudley Street, Meeting House Hill and Neponset to the Robertson House at Quincy, then Holbrook, Brockton and Campello, returning by Quincy Adams, West Quincy, Milton Lower Mills and Washington Street — about forty-five miles in seven hours on the road.