The Wheelmen's Gazette, Vol 4, No 6
Articles in this issue
- Charles Alexander Persons's ghost story follows the Queen City Wheelmen, whose captain dies delirious after promising 'I'll be with you on that run, forever and forevermore' — and reappears as a phantom rider pacing their next moonlight run before vanishing down a lane.
- A parody poem, echoing 'Bingen on the Rhine,' has a dying 'little city clerklet' lament that a bicycle wrecked him during a country vacation, joking that his size is 'number three' for the undertaker.
- In Chris Wheeler's racing story, Archie Hendricks tells clubmates how he won a novice's bicycle race at Worsley against rival Will Kimberley, and, that same afternoon, won the heart of Kimberley's sweetheart, Maude Appleby of Worsley.
- A tongue-in-cheek captioned illustration presents a supposed 'composite photograph of the Bungtown Wheelmen,' spoofing the amateur-photography fad among cycling clubs.
- An editorial urges cycle dealers to adopt Saturday half-holidays during July and August so working wheelmen have more leisure to ride, suggesting agents in each town organize joint afternoon club runs.
- Announces that the tenth annual League of American Wheelmen meet will be held at Hagerstown, Maryland, July 2-4, 1889, with the Gazette promising an illustrated report from original photographs in its July issue.
- Reports that despite poor Decoration Day weather cutting the field from 123 entries to 67 starters, Frank Bodack of the Aeolus Cycling Club won the Chicago-to-Pullman road race in 1:00:13, while scratch rider A. E. Lumsden of the Chicago Cycling Club posted the best time, 56:45.
- The Gazette denounces the professional six-day race at the Chicago Tournament — won by Ned Reading — as a rigged 'hippodrome,' accusing organizers of letting outside riders onto the track to pace favored racers and vowing skepticism toward any future professional race billed as 'square.'
- A recurring feature, compiled by Washington patent attorneys C. A. Snow & Co., lists recently issued American and English patents for bicycle, tricycle, and velocipede improvements — frames, brakes, lamps, saddles, and variable-speed gearing among them.
- The Gazette's monthly digest of race meets 'from May 15 to June 15' reports Ned Reading's win of the Chicago six-day professional race with 685 miles and 4 laps, plus race results from California to Rhode Island and from Canada and England.
- A calendar of cycling meets and races through late October 1889, headlined by the League of American Wheelmen's meet at Hagerstown, Maryland, July 2-4, and the N.C.U. championships at Paddington, England, in late July.
- A column of one-line cycling proverbs on bicycle care and road etiquette, closing with a comic anecdote about a 'champion innocent' near Moore Park who cannot get his stalled bicycle moving even after being pushed.
- The White Cycle Co. of Westboro, Mass. sends in a two-year subscription renewal, praising the Gazette for staying 'free from trade prejudice.'
- Frank Bowden's health column recommends cycling for sufferers of constipation, gout, and sluggish circulation, detailing correct tricycle or safety-bicycle selection, gearing, clothing, and a graduated daily-mileage plan for health-seekers.
- In the Gazette's 'How I Came to Ride' series, George W. Peck, Jr. comically recalls his first bicycle lesson in 1882 — grabbing the brake too hard on a steep hill and shooting into a hog-wallow — and his subsequent years riding a Star bicycle.
- An instructional column details how ladies should mount and dismount a dropped-frame safety or 'Cripper' tricycle, choose pace and clothing, and tour safely, closing with a profile of contributor J. Purvis-Bruce reprinted from Pen and Pencil.
- Profiles the newly formed White Cycle Co. of Westboro, Mass., and inventor Frederick White's 'White Flyer' safety, whose swinging guide-frame lets a rider vary pedal stroke length and position without springs.
- A dialect comic sketch by Charles Alexander Persons, prompted by news of the coming Hagerstown L.A.W. meet, has a character called 'Uncle Kerlumbia' spin a tall tale about a fictional 'League of African Wheelmen' hosting an international cyclists' gathering in his home village decades earlier.
- A short humor piece has young Frederick Selwyn secretly remove the brake from his own bicycle before nobly lending it to his visiting cousin Herbert for a ride down a hill — with predictably disastrous results for Herbert.
- A racing story, signed 'Leadburn,' follows villainous racer John Smith scheming to beat rival Harry Whitton — who is courting Cathie Landor — in a five-mile track race at an Athletic Club meet, resorting to boring Whitton toward the rail before Whitton triumphs regardless.
- In his 'Jack's Jottings' column, the writer condemns a women's six-day bicycle race at Madison Square Garden as indecent, objecting by name to racers Marie Louise Armaindo and Jessie Woods for wearing knickerbockers and calling for more modest cycling dress for women.
- A poem celebrates escaping the smoke and 'pestilence' of the city on a bicycle to enjoy sunsets, streams, and birdsong in the countryside.
- A poem narrated by a boy describes his frustration learning to ride his new bicycle amid other boys' mockery, and his eventual triumph riding it easily all over town.