The Cycle, Vol 2, No 13
Articles in this issue
- Colin Gray's serial Christmas story concludes across eight laps: festivities at Clover Hill include games, ghost stories, a grand quadrille and a ten-pin cotillion, a home-made theatrical pirate drama on a tricycle, a fencing wound that lays the narrator low, and his eventual recovery nursed by Henrietta — who discards the rival Mr. Wilsonby and becomes the narrator's wife.
- The weekly miscellany column carries Christmas verses, news briefs on the Overman–Gormully ball-bearing suit, fears for Thomas Stevens on his round-the-world bicycle journey, the Bulletin's advertising-rate increase, C.T.C. renewal details, J. K. Starley's new tricycle chain patent, and personal notes on Arthur J. Wilson, Karl Kron, and others.
- The N.C.A. Records Committee certifies new path and road records: P. Furnivall's mile in 2m 32½s and quarter in 37¾s at Long Eaton; tricycle path records by F. W. Allard and G. Gatehouse; and the rejection of the Cripps–Ratcliffe tandem tricycle claim and the Wilson–Mills 100-mile tandem road claim for insufficient evidence.
- A short humorous piece, reprinted from the Tricyclist, advises cyclists, horsemen, and skaters who have taken an involuntary fall to ignore onlookers rather than show resentment — quoting Ally Sloper's dictum that rubbing the injury only increases the bystander's satisfaction.
- A correspondent reports that cold weather has halted cycling and club life in New Orleans: the N.O.B.C. has vacated its quarters for new buildings, the Crescent Wheelmen have gone dormant, and a nasty face-first fall by J. Percy Phelan — riding with hands in coat pockets when he struck an iron bolt — is the season's worst accident, though Phelan is riding again.
- The Cycle corrects an account of the Downs–Butcher cyclometer patent interference: the Commissioner found for Downs on the rubber-wheel claim, but Butcher retains the arm patent, meaning each party must design around the other — while noting the Butcher Cyclometer Company has already moved on to a superior product.
- Frank W. 'Papa' Weston — credited as the father of American bicycling — has turned his attention to house-boats, and The Cycle describes his plans for an eighty-foot floating villa with a reception room, saloon, state-rooms, and promenade deck, towable to Nantasket or Newport, priced from $2,000 upward.
- A.C.U. Secretary A. O. McGarrett's letter to L.A.W. President Beckwith is printed in full, proposing that each body appoint a joint committee to settle the unsettled amateur question before the racing season begins.
- New York Bicycle Club secretary Edward J. Shriver reprints the letter he sent to Bulletin editor Aaron demanding a proper apology for an official correspondent's attack on the club — noting that Aaron has held the letter for two weeks without publishing it — and warns the League that the club intends to hit back equally hard in public.
- Coverage of the 142-hour bicycle race at Minneapolis — contested by Albert Schock, W. J. Morgan, and Mlle. Louise Armaindo — with a separate account of the disputed 100-mile race between Morgan and champion Woodside, in which Morgan won by fifteen yards in record rink time only for the referee to declare the race a hippodrome and void all bets.
- Club notes record the Buffalo Bicycle Club's new constitution and officers elected 13 December (total season mileage 48,936 miles, with Dr. Appelby leading at 4,028), the Somerville Cycle Club's annual officer election, and the formation of the Marion County Wheelmen in Hannibal, Missouri.