St. Paul daily globe., 1895-09-22
A Philosophers of the Wheel.

Inc nrSt great bicycle season is
nearly at an end. 1t is not enough
for the critical observer of contem-
porary life to set this down as the
year when the wheel ran Napoleon
and Trilby close for the place of
favor1te fad. 1t is time to inuuire
what has really happened. and what
it all means. The street car COM
panies and livery stable men will
tell you what it means financially
to themselves. The physicians rem
der somewhat similar report. A
certain Georgia clergyman whose
name Is already forgotten told us
what he thought it meant socially.
But the intelligent citizen, the per-
son to whom the events Of the hour
are chiefly valuable as they afford
food for reflection upon how to make
tomorrow better than today, has not
yet publicly spoken.
One such philosopher came into our
office yesterday. He said: 81 want
to give you some points about the
mental and spiritual value of the BIZ
cycle. Everybody knows it is good
for the health, and good to use
when you want to get somewhere in
a hurry; but the higher purposes it
SubServeS have been quite over
looked in the literature of the SUBJ
ject. First of all, it affords a
healthful stimulus to the vanity Of
the scholar and thinker who learns
tn ,@@
over he finds it as normal a method
Of progression as walking; and this
is fattering, if, as is probable, he
has hitherto been as clumsy at physi-
cal sports as people usually are who
learn to play with their minds first
The next pleasant discovery he
makes is that riding is a very direct
mental stimulus. If man takes
enough ordinary exercise to oxygen
ate his brain thoroughly, he be-
comes so tired that he does not get
the best results from it until the
wheel, somehow oxygen seems to be
conveyed directly to the brain. It is
like champagne, in that exhilaration
sets in at once. His mind begins
to work-even to work brilliantly It
is as If a key had been turned in
some forgotten chamber in the
brain, and hosts of unremembered
ideas troop out, fresh from their long
SecluSion. It would vastly profit all
employers Of mental labor to insist
that their employees spend an hour
a day on the wheel. I expect the
twentieth century will see the en-
actment of laws to protect such Ia
borers from the avarice of those en-
ployers who would make them ride
| too much in order to reap the fruits
of the resulting intellectual har-
I vest"
\ The next discovery he makes is
that of spiritual benefit-a subject
''I never have understood, myself,
why we speak freely Of our physical
welfare, cautiously of our mental con-
dition and not at all concerning our
souls health. Personally, I confess
to having been on better terms with
H
| taken to the wheel. After a long
ride the world looks a different and
much better place. 1t seems, in fact.
so good that the notion of heaven
. becomes temporarily superfluous.
heard rider say the other day: IF
flying resembles wheeling, no Won
der the angels have some reputa-
ton for goodness and the remark
suggested to me the possibility that
the wheel might be not only the
means appointed to lead a. perverse
generation of sedentary habits back
to a healthful out-of-door life, but
also that designed to lift them up
ultimately to who knows what spirit
ual heights. And if. this seems inn
probable to the clergy and other
theorizers, at all events 1T is quite
as likely to do so as any panacea
that social science has yet pro-
duced."