No saddle is perfect. The perfect saddle, as the public looks at it, is the saddle that fits everybody. It will never be made, for “people are different.” The true wisdom of saddle buying is to get one that will fit you. Choose a saddle as you choose a pair of shoes. Wrong shoes cause corns. So do wrong saddles. Saddle corns are decidedly uncomfortable.
During the season of 1898 the rider will, more than ever before, be allowed the privilege of stipulating the make of saddle he will have furnished on the cycle he buys, because competition in the cycle trade has reached such a stage that only cycles with exceptional advantages in the way of equipment will sell easily. With the reduction in price of bicycles has come a reduction in the price of saddles, so that at present the difference in price between saddles of recognized merit and inferior imitations is not so great as the difference in actual value.
SEAT POSTS.
Of seat posts little need be said. Such adjustability in height as once existed was had by the slot in crank, the saddle position being fixed. The rear-driver allows a large vertical adjustment, which is still obtained by telescoping one tube into another. In this there is no recent change save in the modes of fastening, which are more in the direction of internal binders, nearly all working on the principle of expanding one of the tubes to bind on the other by the use of a wedge. Many of these devices are neat, convenient and invisible. A peculiarity is the one on the Wolff-American, working by an external lever and using an internal “thumb-latch,” which jams of itself when borne down to the horizontal. The goose-neck spring stem, of the day when saddles were borne high above the frame, has disappeared; but if the present craze for short heads and extreme drop continues the tall rider will be compelled to return gradually to this or some other device for raising up, including the long draw-out of the stem which used to be characteristic about six years ago.
CHAPTER XII.
HANDLEBARS, GRIPS AND BRAKES.
KELLY ADJUSTABLE BAR.