"EAT BRAN AND KEEP HEALTHY"

The bicycle whose place in modern traffic seems as severely questioned as that of the coach horse is undergoing reclamation in England. Clubs for bicycling are dusting out their abandoned quarters and planning new trips, according to the Manchester papers, while Easter turned out to be largely a bicycle parade. Perhaps, with this reappearance of a sport of a generation ago, will return the other means our fathers took to keep their waistline slender.

The modern cyclist does not get the exhilaration which one felt bestride one of these mighty wheeled bicycles, especially when it was the custom to blow a horn with one free hand. Beside these cyclists strode groups of "pedestrians", not sauntering in dress clothes but flailing the air with their elbows and equipped according to the sport catalogue. At times there would go racing by a "gentleman's driving outfit", consisting usually of a buggy stripped for speed, fragile wheels and a pair of well clipped, mettlesome horses that could do a mile in not too many seconds over two minutes. Plenty of exercise was afforded in keeping the horses going in one direction and the driver in his seat.

If the man must go "down to the sea in ships" he did not put more gas in his motor boat, but piled the family in a rowboat for ballast and paddled up the river. This was the only water sport fully accredited by society. Bearded ball players, looking like the present House of David team, played the new game of baseball with leather-tipped gloves; and Paddy the Blacksmith stopped the ball with his unprotected chest. At home those more pressed for time did not take a "daily dozen" before the phonograph, but jumped up and down on a stiff spring board, a setting-up of shaking down which demanded a high ceiling.

Now when there are new sports, vitamines, masseurs, and reducing medicine the old folks like to hearken back to their energetic youth when each man took his own exercise and did not watch some one else play. Yet while our Indian stalking ancestors may have been trim and athletic of necessity, old family albums show corporations as well as side whiskers and one wonders how they flourished in the rigorous life of the time. Can it be that men existed in that golden age who never pushed a pedal nor pulled an oar? Impossible.