This velocipede is manufactured by Messrs. Loring & Keene, of Chicago,
Illinois, and has become very popular in that city and throughout the
West. It is a light machine, somewhat similar to that of Pickering &
Davis. The saddle is upon a spiral spring, is not connected with the
rear wheel, and serves as a seat and brake. The manufacturers claim
that it will ascend a grade of one foot in eighteen, and that it
can be driven at great speed. Its price is $130. D. W. Gosling, of
Cincinnati, Ohio, has been engaged for some months in the manufacture
of a velocipede upon the Franco-American plan. He claims that his
bicycle is equal to any other, both in durability and fine workmanship.
There is another manufactory in Cincinnati, which turns out sixteen
hundred velocipedes per week, that are sold at $35 each. These machines
are of the poorest possible workmanship and material.
There are large numbers of bicycles in the market which are both
unsafe and dangerous, and which the makers push into unsuspecting
hands by offering them at much reduced rates. Many portions of these
which should be of wrought iron, are made of cast iron, of course
attractively painted. Nothing should be cast about the metal works of a
velocipede except the brasses.
A bad machine carefully kept, may, perhaps, last longer than a good
machine very badly managed. It should be the ambition of a good rider,
however, to have a good machine, kept in good order. There is danger
to the velocipedist in pushing ahead with speed, when the slightest
collision, or the giving way of some minute portion of the machine, may
smash the whole affair.
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