The American Bicycling Journal, Vol 1, No 9
Articles in this issue
- Front-page Latin toast credited to "Holmes plus J. G. D." — "Bibamus ad primum Bicyclicum Club, in urbe eorum cui nomen est 'Hub'" — with a free English rendering wishing luck to the pioneer Boston Bicycle Club and joking that not even Peirce's own chalk could reckon its growth.
- First instalment of a contributed historical survey of man-powered locomotion, proposing to trace the evolution of the machine from pre-historic times to the modern bicycle. The writer excludes water and aerial travel and promises to judge every advance by two tests: how far it economized labour and how far it economized time.
- Comic Boston sketch set in the store of the Domestic Sewing Machine Company, where a stout, crimson-shawled customer demanding "Emmas" is taken first for a girl-hunter and then for a buyer of Emma mining stock, until the manager realises she wants a hemmer for her "Hetna" machine.
- Part First of Charles G. Leland's dialect Breitmann ballad, written about 1869 and reprinted by the editor as one of the few notable poems on the velocipede. Herr Schnitzerl's one-wheeled philosopede slices him in two, and Breitmann summons his ghost — in dog-Latin — to teach him how to build the machine.
- A very short-sighted lady living "not one hundred miles from Cambridge" astonishes her family by reporting a man flying three or four feet above the ground; his "all bright" bicycle was simply invisible to her. Followed by a Norristown Herald quip contrasting England's "war feeling" with wheeling.
- London letter dated 28 March 1878 reporting an unusually fine spell and capital road surfaces, David Stanton's completed 1,000-mile ride and his Agricultural Hall benefit, John Keen's coming Easter handicap at Molineux Grounds, Wolverhampton and his championship match with ex-champion Fred Cooper for O. E. McGregor's £50. It also covers the Bicycle Union's first two meetings under Mr. Cobb, the withdrawal of the West Kent and Amateur clubs, the Pickwick Club's revived Hampton Court Meet, the Stanley Club's exhibition of sixty machines, and the appearance of the "London Bicycle Club Gazette".
- Commends the photographs taken by Mr. Drew of an early run of the first bicycle club formed in the country, showing fourteen riders and their machines in three positions, with the entrance arch to Chestnut Hill and the reservoirs as backgrounds.
- Reprinted from the "London Bicycling News": a six-day tour on a 54-inch "Stassen" from Hampstead by Kew, Maidenhead, Reading, Streatley, Wallingford, Abington and Lechlale to Cirencester, along the Roman "Ermine Way" to Gloucester and Ross, down the Wye past Tintern Abbey to Chepstow, and home from Bath by Box Hill, Marlborough and Reading — 272 miles, ending with a 112-mile final day.
- At the annual dinner of the Tower Hamlets Bicycle Club of London, M. Carner, Esq., M.P., speaking as a member of the medical profession, argued that in an age of crowded industrial centres bicycle riding is a great promoter of health and vigour in the rising generation.
- Clipped verse and paragraphs, including a rhyme from the Crimson on Old Time mowing his hours "bicycle" instead of by scythe, a widow's-chair verse, and a Hawkeye squib comparing American women painting jugs with their husbands colouring meerschaum pipes.
- Leading editorial of 13 April 1878 on the crowds drawn by the Boston Bicycle Club's runs and the city's pride in housing the first bicycle club in the country, warning that other cities are watching and that failure by the B. Bi. C. would set back bicycling for years. It closes with two ladies overheard at Trinity church deploring the members' "horrid gaiters".
- Nothing to record at home but a Haverhill match in which Booth on his machine lost easily to a pedestrian on corners too sharp for speed. From the "London Bicycle Journal", David Stanton's benefit at Agricultural Hall, Islington drew some three thousand spectators: J. Edwards won the ten-mile amateur handicap, the horse "Prince" beat Favel, and C. Terront of Paris took the ten-mile professional handicap from W. Phillips of Wolverhampton.
- The Boston Bicycle Club's fourth run on 30 March took fourteen riders via Chester Park and the Milldam to Chestnut Hill reservoir, where Mr. Drew took three photographs. The April monthly meeting fixed runs to Squantum, Arlington, Newton and Quincy, and the Fast-day run of the 11th brought twenty-five riders to the Old Squantum House, watched by about two thousand spectators at the start.
- The journal's letters department for this number, carrying "A Very Pleasant Meet.", "Bohemianism.", and a letter signed D. proposing a musical attachment to the wheel — a "Bicyclicalliope" — so that the machine should announce its approach on the road.
- Letter describing the accidental meeting in State street between the "Young Man Afraid Of His Duplex Excelsior Bicycle" and his old antagonist, which passed off cordially and was all "wheel talk"; the writer asks the editor to do a little missionary work for yachting, saddle-riding and walking as well.
- Letter signed "Mill-dam" attacking the journal's eccentric "Bohemian" correspondent for quibbling over "my next" and "our next" while failing to make his promised point, and advising the editor to bring the funny fellow to the scratch or else kick him again.
- Article taken from the February "Chamber's Journal" and printed in place of the usual story, prompted by the paper's earlier remarks on aerial navigation. It recounts Mr. Glaisher's 1862 ascents from Wolverhampton, the near-suffocation of MM. Barral and Bixio at thirty thousand feet in 1850, and Tissandier and de Fonvielle's voyages in the Neptune and the Giant, concluding that until balloons can be steered they remain little better than toys.
- Editorial replies to "Barney" of Liverpool (too crude in style, try again), "Uninitiated" of San Francisco (buy rubber tires and cement from the dealer who sold the machine), "L. F." of Conn., "J. L. D." of Broadway, "B. L. S." — told that upwards of three hundred American patent holders each want more than the whole profit on a machine, so home manufacture will not pay yet — and "Amos."