PLEASURE CYCLING

By Henry Clyde. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. $1.00. Opening this little volume at page 148, we read half-way down the page : "A lady once said to the writer : ' The bicycle has been the greatest of blessings to my husband. He has always seemed fairly well, but always nervous, and at times afflicted with the worst attacks of the " blues." These never visit him now in the wheeling season, and I shall welcome for his sake the opening spring and settled roads.' "Wives of sulky husbands take note. Mr. Clyde appears to be more sensible of the poetry of motion than was Mr. Porter in his Cycling for Health and Pleasure, noticed in these columns last month. There is an exhilaration about him which is certainly catching, but sometimes one is tempted to wish it did not run to effervescence. Yet do not let this blind the reader to the real value of the work, which is conscientiously done. In information and practical helpfulness it is no whit behind its neighbour already mentioned, and its literary quality is certainly much better ; while in describing the principal parts common to the safety bicycle, illustrated with an accompanying diagram, and in the addition of an index, it has decided advantages. Mr. Clyde's timely words of counsel on using the wheel for pleasure as distinguished from its too prevalent abuse in racing are well worth consideration. It was a bright idea, too, to relieve the monotony of the page with silhouette drawings, some of them rather comic in their effect.