PREFATORY. THE unprecedented peculiarities of most of the verses herein contained seem to be warrant enough for their collection into a volume. Doubtless a new Ars poetica, with a wholly novel subject (though narrow), should float a book, if it be not otherwise insufferably heavy. The author-compiler is one of the very first Bostonians who, in the latter part of the year 1877, began to ride and write into notice the bicycle in this country. A few words also seem needful here in explanation of his entering upon the manufacture of this “machine poetry,”—such in a fuller sense of the term than it ever had before. Under the early exhilarating effect of the wiry transit, in a sportive communication to a city paper (the Globe of Jan. 9, '78) he called upon our native poets, naming some in particular, to favor us with a song or two for the new move, declaring that its |
