Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1896 — Secret of the Bicycle's Popularity. [ARTICLE]

Secret of the Bicycle's Popularity.

Now the bicycle has offered to the great majority of citizens a means of exercise and open-air enjoyment for which they need not be specially equipped by nature, man and woman, weak and strong, dwarf and three-hundred-pounder—all sorts and conditions of men—can and do learn to wheel, and with comparatively small perseverance become as proficient for all practical purposes as the most handsomely endowed athlete of them all. This is the true secret of the bicycle’s firm hold on the public, and here is its greatest value.—Scribner. A Philadelphia beggar wears a placard inscribed: “I am married and blind.”