The Bicycling World, Vol 13, No 4
Articles in this issue
- Unheaded leaders welcome wheelmen to Boston for the L.A.W. Meet, announce the World's new original cartoon feature and the subscription cut to one dollar a year, and attack League secretary-editor Aaron for calling members 'thick headed' over the botched mail-vote election his misleading Bulletin instructions caused.
- The paper retracts its statement that the Overman vs. Pope Manufacturing Co. suit over the Bown patent was postponed at Pope's request: both sides agreed to the delay after the death of the father of Mr. Thurston, senior counsel for Bown and Overman.
- A correspondent signing himself '374,968' recounts his failed attempts to write spring poetry about bicycle springs, running through heroic, Alexandrine and French verse forms before producing a rueful rondeau, 'I cannot ride.'
- Messrs. Hill, Fairchild and Fairfax arrive in Boston on Tuesday evening exactly thirty days after starting from New Orleans, with men and machines in good shape.
- Gossip column of one-line items: Elwell tops the five-eighths-mile Presidio Hill course in 4.30, the Pope cup is withdrawn from the Lynn races, Rowe and Hendee train daily at Lynn, 'Faed' scoops prizes at Ball's Bridge track in Dublin, and H. O. Duncan takes the 50-mile English championship over Lees.
- Mr. C. B. Patten, the bank man who wrote the 1879 anti-cycling letters as 'Young man afraid of his bicycle', dies after placing himself in front of the express train at Savin Hill station following years of nervous trouble.
- The Chicago letter reports that Fred Rollinson is alive and reforming, Chief Consul Blake postpones the Illinois Division L.A.W. meet to 3 July at Cheltenham Beach alongside the World's Pastime Exposition, and the Owl Club will send no delegates while Ned Oliver and Burley Ayres represent the Chicago Club.
- A poem by correspondent 'Pedals' under the Currente Calamo head, burlesquing the coming Boston League Meet parade — from the Arizona Cyclers with revolvers in their boots to Johnny Morgan's German Band — and urging riders to stay over for the Lynn races.
- Notes on the seventh L.A.W. Meet, Boston's second: Ducker and Beckwith tipped for the presidency, four color-coded parade divisions, hotel hints (the Boscobel, Faneuil, Bailey's and Hotel Winthrop), with squibs continuing overleaf on Burrill and Clark of the Wakefield Bicycle Club mounting Cowdrey's Hill on a Singer Humber tandem.
- 'Titnam' reports 250 New York-area wheelmen leaving for the Meet on the Fall River steamer Bristol, the New York-New Jersey inter-club road race shifting to the Irvington-Milburn course with Kluge of the Hudson County Wheelmen the favorite, and the King's County Wheelmen's foiled gold-pin presentation to Captain Pettus.
- A humorous sketch about an ardent wheelman who spends a vast amount of money burning to achieve distinction on the racing path.
- A humorous narrative in which a cyclist waits endlessly for his new bicycle to be delivered, experiences mishaps at a country inn including a stolen machine, and is finally reunited with it through a mysterious telegram from a detective.
- Satirical verses by 'F. G. L.' mocking the American fashion of dubbing any professional person 'professor' — the imposing academic turns out to be a skating-rink professor.
- Member No. 7,937 argues the recent L.A.W. election was void because blank ballots were not sent between 1 and 10 March as the by-laws require, and Edward J. Shriver announces the revised Springfield Avenue-Clinton Avenue course for the New York and New Jersey team road race on 12 June.
- A stand-by-stand guide to the show at the Mechanics Building: the Pope Company's new Columbia racer and safety, the Coventry Machinists' Marlboro tandems, S. T. Clark's New Rapids, Gideon's Surrey Invincibles, W. B. Everett's Singer tandems, Stall's Stars, the Overman Wheel Co.'s Victors, and Gormully & Jeffery's new Champion.
- Notices of Ducker & Goodman's new Wheelman's Reference Book, with forty-nine portraits of leading wheelmen at fifty cents, and the enlarged second edition of 'Lyra Bicyclica' bound for the League Meet season by the Bicycling World Co.
- Racing notes: the East Hartford Wheel Club's 5 June meeting programme, Wilhelm of Reading winning four races at New Castle where W. H. Barber set a world one-mile unicycle record of 4.01, the Yale Bicycle Club's $1,500 tournament at Hamilton Park, and W. L. Van Horn winning the Colorado Wheel Club's fifteen-mile road race at Denver.
- The complete five-day programme for the L.A.W. Meet in Boston, covering the hill-climbing contest at Corey Hill, runs through the Newtons, the officers' meeting, and the championship races at Lynn.
- Calendar of late-May events: the Boston Club's cycle show in the Mechanics Fair Building, the League parade and races at the Union Grounds, Dr. Kendall's Nantasket run, the Lynn Cycle Club's track opening with the first Prince-Neilson race, and the Ixion Bicycle Club's 50-mile road race at Orange, N.J.
- The official C.T.C. column from Acting Chief Consul C. H. Potter of Cleveland lists the American state consuls, provisionally elected members, the division's League Meet headquarters at the Hotel Vendome, and copies of the 1886 Hand-Book at thirty-five cents.