The next time the signs of the zodiac are revised room should be made among them for the bicycle. As they stand they are out of date. The bicycle has come to be about the most conspicuous and omnipresent vernal emblem, and it is more conspicuous and omnipresent this year than ever before. Hordes of new adventurers–women adventurers in particular–have learned to ride it during the winter that is past, and are ready to seize upon the earliest days of warmth and sunshine to explore the parks and country roads. Since bicycling began an appalling amount of new knowledge has become necessary for the successful guidance of a family. One must know which bicycle is the best, what is the lowest sum it can be bought for, what sum any given second hand bicycle is really worth, whether last year’s machine will do for another season, and so on indefinitely. Briefly, the active participant in contemporary life must know bicycles, and if he is the father of a family his knowledge must be co-extensive with his parental responsibilities. The peculiarity about bicycles which is most impressive, and also most afflicting, is that every bicyclist yearns to start the season with a brand new machine of the very newest make. There is such a thing as being satisfied with last year’s horse, and even preferring him to an untried quadruped, but improvements in bicycles are devised so much more rapidly than improvement in horses that bicycles get out of date much sooner. And the, too, when you buy a new bicycle you can know pretty definitely what you are getting, and when you buy a new horse of course you can’t.
This article accomplishes many things in its few sentences. It describes consumerism, the inability to know everything, good parenting, and the effect of fads on society. It even compares two prevalent modes of transportation, and decides that for machines, newer is better but for horses, experience is best. I wonder when used cars will move from “pre-owned” to “experienced”?