A Wheel within a Wheel - How I learned to Ride the Bicycle with Some Reflections by the Way

By Frances E. Willard

First published in 1895, this classic by Frances Willard provides a fascinating insight into the explosion in popularity of the bicycle at the turn of the century, and explores the new freedom it offered women in the West. "A Wheel within a Wheel" is highly recommended for those with an interest in the history of the bicycle, and it is not to be missed by collectors of allied literature. Frances Willard Facts (September 28, 1839 - February 7, 1898) was an American educator, temperance activist, reformer, suffragist, and speaker. She headed the Women's Christian Temperance Union from 1879-1898, and was both the first dead of woman at Northwestern University and the first woman represented in statuary Hall, U.S. Capitol Building. Other notable works by this author include: "How to Win: A Book for Girls" (1886), and "Woman in the Pulpit" (1888). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on the History of the Bicycle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macha Press
• Release date: Sep 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473342217

Book preview

A WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL

PRELIMINARY

FROM my earliest recollections, and up to the ripe age of fifty-three, I had been an active and diligent worker in the world. This sounds absurd; but having almost no toys except such as I could manufacture, my first plays were but the outdoor work of active men and women on a small scale. Born with an inveterate opposition to staying in the house, I very early learned to use a carpenter’s kit and a gardener’s tools, and followed in my mimic way the occupations of the poulterer and the farmer, working my little field with a wooden plow of my own making, and felling saplings with an ax rigged up from the old iron of the wagon-shop. Living in the country, far from the artificial restraints and conventions by which most girls are hedged from the activities that would develop a good physique, and endowed with the companionship of a mother who let me have my own sweet will, I ran wild until my sixteenth birthday, when the hampering long skirts were brought, with their accompanying corset and high heels; my hair was clubbed up with pins, and I remember writing in my journal, in the first heartbreak of a young human colt taken from its pleasant pasture, "Altogether, I recognize that my occupation is