The Wheelmen's Gazette, Vol 4, No 10
Articles in this issue
- Fiction by Charles Alexander Persons in which a plantation owner's son rides his "trusty Victor" wheel sixty miles overnight to pay off the field hands after the overseer Mr. Johnson is robbed and stabbed, and stumbles on the hidden lair of a murderous wood-cutter named Edings whose skeleton-filled trap-door house is exposed with the help of his dog Haunt.
- A state-by-state and international roundup of cycling race meets and tournaments held between September 15 and October 15, 1889, covering L.A.W. division meets and road races in states from Connecticut to Virginia plus records abroad such as F. T. Bidlake's 100-mile tricycle record and A. Holbein's 323-mile 24-hour ride on a safety in England.
- The regular roundup of newly issued American cycling patents (reported for the Gazette by C. A. Snow & Co., Patent Attorneys of Washington, D.C.) and new English patents, covering velocipede, tricycle, and safety-bicycle improvements such as saddles, chain-driving gear, and G. Darby's diamond non-vibrating spring bracket.
- A short sentimental poem, set in decorative type the scan's text layer cannot read, comparing a bicycle's unyielding spokes and unbending handlebar to the steadfast, unbreakable bonds of true friendship, and to the "spokes in the wheel of time" that never loosen their hold.
- A mock-heroic account, reprinted from Sports Afield, of six touring wheelmen setting out at dawn to ride ninety miles, satirizing their exaggerated suffering from heat, thirst, and exhaustion as they push on toward the fictional town of Elizabeth.
- A touring essay signed "Stamson" arguing that a leisurely forty (or even twenty-five) miles a day, with stops for notes and sketches, makes for a better tour than distance-chasing, and urging cycle makers and dealers to fund road improvements rather than add gadgetry to their machines.
- A brief maxim-style list of health rules for wheelmen, from staying cheerful and avoiding excitement to riding "in a rational manner" rather than racing every vehicle on the road.
- A column of short cycling news items, under a decorative wheel-logo banner the scan's text layer cannot read, including R. P. Gormully's return voyage from Liverpool, Englishman Richard Howell's new mile record of 2:31¼, the Springfield Bicycle Manufacturing Co.'s assignment for the benefit of creditors, and Tom Roe's attempt on the Chicago-to-San Francisco Across-the-Continent record on a Gormully & Jeffery American Champion.
- A calendar of upcoming October-to-December 1889 race meets and tournaments, including the L.A.W. division meet at Wheeling, a tournament at Toronto, Canada, and the Kings County Wheelmen's 25-mile handicap road race in New York.
- A short poem by Chris Wheeler about a wheelman who twice fails to find words for a "maiden gay" he passes while riding, and resolves to ride the same road again hoping for one more glimpse of her.
- An essay signed "Jack" arguing that confidence and mental state govern athletic performance, illustrated by a rider who wrongly blamed a saddle squeak on a tight bearing and exhausted himself worrying, and warning that "high-strung" temperaments who overtax themselves in cycle racing risk sudden collapse.
- A first-person account by "Tentoone" of Lancaster, PA of learning to ride in the spring of 1886 on a battered rented "mule" machine watched by teasing telephone-exchange girls, then teaching himself on a Rudge safety in his own garden until he stopped veering into an apricot tree.
- An illustrated comic strip about "young Jenkins," who buys a poodle to accompany him on his tours; after the dog causes him a bad header and later chases off a tramp who steals his bicycle, the strip ends with the tramp taking "an awkward fall."
- A fiction piece by Alice Brown in which sisters Madge and Daphne acquire their cousins' old tandem tricycle "Peggy" over their disapproving Uncle Melcher's objections, then ride it to fetch a doctor after he breaks his leg falling in his barn, winning his grudging approval and an offer to fund their schooling at Ellsworth Seminary.
- An unsigned lyric poem addressing the autumn wind and asking it to carry gentle memories of past loves rather than the "recollections of our last ungraceful fall."
- A comic poem by Chris Wheeler mocking the doomsayers who warn that cycling will make the rider fat, thin, "mad as was Guiteau," or damned, concluding that critics should be ignored.
- A poem by Charles Richard Dodge describing an autumn ride "racing" the falling leaves out of town, in which the rider feels himself dissolve into a dreamlike, ten-mile reverie with his machine before waking as the sun sets.
- A comic poem by Charles Alexander Persons, framed as the lament of "a strapped American cycler touring through England," pining not for home but for his father's pocket-book so he can keep cycling on Britain's smooth roads.