The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-08-18
BICYCLES AND PERSONAL DEVILS.

Many and varied are the arguments
for and against cycling especially as
to the good or ill that follows the use
of the wheel by women. Doctors there
are who declare that cycling will bring
upon womankind "a host of evils, ply
steal, as we'll as moral; doctors there
are also who maintain that the wheel
is ito be the instrument whereby
women will be made stronger, more
self-reliant and better in every way.
Thus do doctors disagree-and the
women decide ITO wheel.
With ministers, however, the case is
different. Out of all the reverends
who have touched upon the subject,
scarcely one has had good word for
the prevailing fad. They have de-
nounced the use of the wheel by
women in unmeasured terms, and the
fair riders have been cenSured as 'un-
womanly," ''immodest'' and unfit ito
be the mothers of children or the wives
of good men,
1t is a noticeable fact in clerical
raids of this kind there will always be
found one of the cloth who will lead
the rest of his brethren in the eX'traya-
gance of his opposition. In this case
the reverend is DR.. Hawthorne OF
Georgia, who recently preached a red
hot sermon"-not hard thing to do
in these days, by the way-against
woman and her bike. In the course of
his remarks the doctor sought ito find
the reason for the craze, and declared
that a personal devil is responsible for
the desire on THE part of women to
disport themselves on bicycles He
said in part: "a young woman sees
a bicycle race and is influenced by
desire to participate in the contest.
Swayed by this feeling she mounts
bicycle and begins a course Of disci-
pine When she realizes her disas-
trous mistake and begins to suffer
from the unenviable notoriety of her
indicate and unwomanly conduct,
she says that it was her love of eX-
citing pleasure that tempted her to
take the false step. She is mistaken.
1t was not the love Of pleasure, but a
personal devil Satan entered into her
that he might degrade and get her pic
ture into the columns of some sensa-
tional paper and make her the sub
ject of obscene comment in every club
house and gathering of filthy sensa-
tionalists. Recently a great religious
convention in an eastern city con-
Guided its exercises by a bicycle race
on the streets between 700 men,
women and preachers. Could anything
less than a personal devil have insti-
gated such a performance
So, now, we suppose the matter is
settled.
1t pains us, however, to think that
with every graceful woman astride a
wheel, whether in skirts, in boomers
or Knockers" no matter how sweet or
enchanting she may appear; no matter
how virtuous or how pure she may be;
no matter whether she be sailing
along the dusty highway of the city
or skimning along the cool, shady
lanes of the country, listening, as she
takes in deep draughts of Gods pure
air, to the music of the brook, the
songs of the birds, and feasting her
soul on the beauties of nature, that
there is ever with her a, horrid per-
sonal devil-true, we don't see him,
but the Rev. Hawthorne says he is
there, and being a man who has de-
voted his life to a contest with the
personal devils, he ought ito know, and
we suppose we must bow down to his
superior wisdom and admit it.