The Bicycling World, Vol 1, No 2
Articles in this issue
- Light editorial paragraphs noting thirty-five bicyclers in New York City, thanking Rockwood Hoar, Esq. for the account behind the McFarland v. Brown court report, teasing the John Keen interview held over for space, and joining the Boston Courier in condemning the city's dimmed three-foot street-light burners.
- The first instalment of an extensive interview with English professional champion John Keen, covering his background as a bicycle maker and racer since 1870, his views on machine specifications, and his advice on saddle and pedal fit.
- History and membership roll of the Hartford Bicycle Club, describing its formation in October 1879 after informal summer riding, with notable rides including a round trip to New Britain.
- A Brooklyn Bicycle Club correspondent recounts a six-man election-day run from the Annex Ferry at Pavonia over the 'plank road' macadam across the Jersey Flats to Newark, then along Central Avenue to East Orange and Orange, praising the New Jersey roads despite a bitterly cold wind.
- Notes from the clubs: the Bangor Bi. C. has lapsed, the Chauncey Hall Bicycle Club forms in Boston under J. G. Coolidge, the Crescent and Hartford clubs adopt uniforms, the Lynn Bi. C. elects a bugler and guide, and the Salem club runs to Medford, joined by Lynn and Massachusetts men.
- Results of the Harvard Bicycle Club fall meeting on Jarvis Field, where W. D. Swan won the mile final in 3.22 1/4, followed by a day-by-day summary of the Boston tent races on Huntington Avenue featuring John Keen, Charles Terront, David Stanton, William Cann and the Harrison brothers.
- Personal paragraphs giving the ages of Harry Etherington's Anglo-Franco team, W. W. Allen's recovery from his racing fall, W. W. Stall's and W. S. Tufts's rides, John Keen's bicycle-versus-trotting-horse challenge in the Boston Herald, J. H. Wade of Cleveland, J. C. Thompson's New Haven rink, and Frank W. Weston's new felt helmet.
- Kol Kron reports the New York Park Commissioners' order excluding bicycles from the 59th Street and Fifth Avenue sidewalks; a Yonkers riding school claims forty riders taught in four weeks; and a Philadelphia correspondent describes a club's comically confused bugle-call drill at Horticultural Hall.
- Correspondence from a New York contributor reporting on the local cycling scene, club news, and road conditions in and around the city.
- An entertaining column from the pseudonymous 'Jack Easy' describing touring observations, road encounters, and humorous cycling anecdotes.
- First-day report of the six-day, fourteen-hours-a-day contest begun in Chicago on 24 November, pitting Keen, Terront, Stanton and Cann against seven American professionals — including the Harrisons, Rutland and Meyer — who each receive a hundred-mile allowance.
- A verse by 'Lord Boyrun' celebrating the bicycle in mock-Byronic style, gliding past green fields with a calm vigour that has its own industry.
- A directory of club secretaries and addresses, from the Boston, Brooklyn and Buffalo clubs to Chicago, Cleveland, Essex, Hartford, Harvard, Montreal, Philadelphia and Providence.
- An editorial on housing the bicycle for the northern winter, urging clubs, agents and riding-school keepers to secure indoor halls of forty by sixty feet or larger, and predicting the number of riders will double by March.
- A companion editorial distinguishing the learners to ride from the learners to teach, arguing that a good instructor can bring a novice through in three lessons without a single fall, where a careless one discourages his pupil in six.
- Introduction to the paper's new archery department, announcing that John Worcester, Corresponding Secretary of the Eastern Archery Association, has furnished its leader and will lend continuing aid to the columns.
- Notice of the newly formed association laying out grounds inside the trotting track at Beacon Park under chairman J. Malcolm Forbes, with a plea that a properly built cinder bicycle path be added for Boston's five hundred wheelmen.
- A column of puns and clipped witticisms from the Boston Post, Transcript and Globe, on subjects from Harvard adding the bicycle to its electives to archers drawing the long bow.
- A comic ballad from the paper's Jersey correspondent about Jonathan Juggs, a young naturalist who buys a sixty-inch wheel, chases a giant moth with his butterfly net, and comes to a fatal cropper commemorated by a roadside stone.
- Replies to readers on choosing a machine no smaller than 50 inches, fitting Pope's cyclometer to a Columbia axle, the clicking of Aeolus ball bearings, and subscription arrangements carried over from the American Bicycling Journal.
- Fixtures including the Boston and Massachusetts clubs' dinner at the Brunswick on 2 December, a three-day tournament at the Pavilion in San Francisco with $2,000 in prizes, and mile and two-mile races at Madison-Square Garden and the Twenty-Second Regiment Armory in New York.
- Notice of the first number of The Cyclist, a new weekly bicycling paper from Coventry, England, edited by Harry Sturmey with C. W. Nairn as London editor, aimed at the great constituency of unattached riders.
- A leader for the new archery columns on starting a club and winning over sceptics, citing Maurice Thompson's success in reviving the sport and the gains in health, strength and carriage that regular target practice brings.
- 'Peds vs. Wheelipeds' compares Waller's 1,404 miles in September's six-day bicycle race against E. P. Weston's 550 miles on foot in June, reckoning the wheel's advantage at nearly three to one.
- A report on a court case involving a bicycle-related dispute, illustrating the legal standing of cyclists on American roads.
- A survey of cycling news from England and Europe, covering racing results, club activities, and new bicycle developments from the British press.
- Extracts from other journals, opening with a Nineteenth Century piece on exercise and continuing with press notices from the Boston Herald, Advertiser, Courier and Globe and the Portland Advertiser welcoming The Bicycling World as successor to the American Bicycling Journal under editor Charles E. Pratt.
- An article making the case that professional men such as physicians, lawyers, and bank messengers could save time and money by using the bicycle for business travel.