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    Pleasure-Cycling
    Pleasure-Cycling
    Pleasure-Cycling
    Ebook147 pages1 hour

    Pleasure-Cycling

    By Henry Clyde

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    About this ebook

    First published in 1895, this vintage guide to cycling presents a wealth of interesting information about the sport from a time when it experienced an explosion of popularity. With chapters on buying, appropriate attire, and health benefits, this timeless volume will be of utility to modern cycling enthusiasts and those just starting out. Profusely illustrated and insightful, "Pleasure-Cycling" would make for a fantastic addition to any library and is not to be missed by collectors of vintage sporting literature. Contents include: "The Poetry of Motion", "Choosing a Bicycle", "How to Ride", "Taking Care of a Bicycle", "Dress and Equipment", "Cycling and Health", and "On the Road". Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on the History of the Bicycle.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacha Press
    Release dateSep 21, 2017
    ISBN9781473342163
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      Book preview

      Pleasure-Cycling - Henry Clyde

      INDEX

      I.

      THE POETRY OF MOTION.

      Never was the man of spirit the victim of ennui if his body was exposed to fatigue; never did the man healthy of body fail to find life light if he had something to engage his mind.

      ALEXANDRE DUMAS.

      I.

      OF the million bicycles, or there-abouts, in use in the United States during the summer of 1894, some hundreds were ridden on the roads or race-tracks by amateur or professional racing-men. Many thousands were used, wholly or in part, in the business of their owners, that is in going to and from offices, shops, or factories at morning and evening, carrying messages, taking orders, visiting patients, and making pastoral visits. But probably three quarters of the million wheels were devoted to pleasure-riding; and if the use of the bicycle for this purpose increases as it seems bound to do, cycling is to become distinctively our national sport. It may not become, or may not long remain, popular with the class which seeks only those sports that are made impossible to others by reason of their expensiveness or the need of special surroundings for the practice of them, but the inherent delight of riding is too bewitching to be abandoned by most of those who have once experienced it.

      It is about the wheel, as a means of amusement and exercise, that this little book is written. But not only as a sport is cycling destined to furnish innocent and exquisite pleasure to thousands of men and women whose enjoyments heretofore, through the stress of narrow circumstances or of absorbing avocations, have been very limited,—not only is it to bring better health and sounder constitutions to this generation of young and middle-aged Americans,—it is to be the saver of time and muscle to busy men, who will adapt the wheel to a hundred purposes in their daily work for which they have been accustomed to use their own unassisted legs and lungs. When the bicycle has fairly taken its place as the popular vehicle of the day, the roads and highways must be adapted to it, and there will no longer be room for the reproach, now too true, that the common highways of the United States are vastly inferior to those of England and the continent of Europe.¹

      The safety bicycle is without doubt the safest road vehicle yet invented. It is fair to assume that nearly all the serious road accidents happening to cyclers have been recorded in the newspapers of the day; and it will be found that by far the greater number of these have occurred by reason of the unskilfulness of the rider or his gross carelessness, as by coasting in the night, or in failing to give warning of his approach in a frequented street. It is of course fair to exclude from the reckoning accidents occurring to professional or amateur racers competing with each other at close quarters, or to record-breakers on the road.

      Bicycling adapts itself to all sorts and conditions of men. No other out-door sport, unless it be the gentle croquet, can be practised at all without a violent degree of physical exertion. This is especially true of base-ball, foot-ball, and tennis. But on a wheel you may jog along a country road at a five-mile gait, or you may emulate Zimmerman upon the race-track. You may spin without conscious effort along a suburban boulevard, or you may, with the utmost exertion of wind and muscle, climb a long acclivity to dash breathlessly down on the other side. You may content yourself with a ten-mile ride each day, or you may train for a succession of century runs. Whatever measure of time and speed you adopt for yourself, you will find the sport a delight which grows with time and experience. The wheelman and his wheel are one in a much closer degree than the equestrian and his horse; for, as between the horse and his rider, there is often, if not always, a conflict of wills, whereas your wheel is, to all intents and purposes, a part of yourself, and answers as if by instinct to your every whim and purpose. Its power is so much added to your own, and as you vault into the saddle and feel the pedals under your feet, you mount into a realm of new possibilities. The petty vexations of life may pursue you on the road, but they cannot overtake you, for the black care that is said to sit behind the horseman cannot find room on the bicycle. Dulness, lassitude, headache, fly away on the breeze which your own motion creates. On the wheel, at least, you will find your own thoughts welcome companions, and whether you ride alone or in company you will never be lonely.

      You will find in this sport not only pleasure, but health. Every man possessed of two legs and a sound heart may take to the wheel with the assurance that his legs will grow stronger, his wind and digestion better, and his nerves less importunate. The tonic effect of the sport upon all the functions of the body is simply amazing. If a jaded business or professional man, overwrought and weary with his year’s work and looking forward with apprehension to his work to come, will devote at the beginning of the season two hours each day to the wheel, he will find, in August, that his accustomed outing at seaside or mountains is no longer a necessity, and if he takes it, it will be with his wheel as a companion.

      Among the many benefits which cycling is to confer on us Americans, not the least is this, that it will confute the absurd notion that athletic and manly sports are exclusively for very young men,—a notion which has never obtained in England, where men of seventy shoot all day over rough land, or ride to hounds, or like Gladstone, are wood-choppers or indefatigable pedestrians. To say that a man is too old to ride is to state an absurdity. Wheeling is easier than walking, and when a man is too old to walk he is ready to die. And he is never ready to do that.

      Scarcely less notable than its physical benefits is the influence for moral good which cycling brings to every community where it is practised. The sport fosters wholesome thoughts and sane habits of living; and the purely healthy excitement which it brings in such large measure makes unattractive that gross artificial excitement which is the chief attraction to the use of stimulants. Says a prominent clergyman¹ in one of our cities: Many a saloon, with its baneful adjuncts of betting and gambling, has been forced to loosen its hold upon young manhood since the advent of the wheel, and street corners, once foul and disgusting spots, have become clean and wholesome, just because a clean and wholesome exercise has been provided for many who idly drifted into the company of the profane and degraded.

      Except rainy days, all times are good times to the wheelman. Dusty roads will never stop him, and a degree of heat which would overpower him walking produces but the slightest discomfort as he spins along in the breeze that he creates for himself. And that is a very muddy road through which the experienced wheelman cannot pick his way. Even sandy roads, which are an abomination in very dry weather, afford the best of riding after a smart rain.

      In early summer, you may rise with the lark, or rather with the robin, and ride through the cool sweetness of the early morning along country roads, where the wild roses and buttercups are freshened by the dew, and the scent of newly mown hay fills the air. Twenty miles you make out and home, before the work of the day has fairly begun for lazy people who know not the pleasures of the road and the wheel. Or you may ride in the August twilights, when the sunset glows crimson in the west or the great thunder clouds warn you to hasten home, along roads where the air is heavy with the scents of the later wild flowers, and the whippoorwills are beginning to sing and the frogs to croak in the marshes.

      In the cooler air of September, you will ride longer and farther under the rolling fair weather clouds, through miles of golden-rod and asters, or along high bluffs or sandy beaches in sight of the soft-sounding sea. But best of all, perhaps, are the October days. The wayside woods blaze with color; the maples are scarlet and the beeches gold. The sumac glows red by the roadside, and the russet of the

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