We left the old town behind us and soon came to the river Parker (don’t call it Parker River in the presence of a Newburyporter). On the farther bank we were greeted by an old resident, who gave us apples to eat and entertained us with stories of the old house in which he lives, which, by the way, is the homestead of the Poor family, of which the noted Ben. Perley Poor and our friend are members. To-day we see Cape Ann under its rural aspect; tomorrow we shall see the bold shore and the open sea.
A boy shouts after the gentleman from New York: “Say, mister, your wheel’s goin’ round,” and the man from Manhattan nearly falls off his wheel from the effect of this very new joke.
At Bean’s Crossing we stopped for a drink of cold water at the well, and, if you will believe it, many of the ladies preferred to drink from the old oaken bucket, and spurned the drinking-cups gallantly offered by the gentlemen. The bucket was clean, however, without a suspicion of dirty moss on it. The ride through Essex woods was a poem in cycling. The summer residents have bought up large tracts of land in these woods and perpetuated this beautiful driveway. The road-bed is good, and one passes under arching trees for miles seeing nowhere any disturbance of nature due to the hand of man, save only the path he is traveling. Drink in this scene if you can, and garnish it with the glory of the autumnal foliage.
Just before we entered the woods we were met by the Poet and the Artist, who rode over from Gloucester to meet us and escort us on our way. They approached us down-hill, as we ascended. Just before we came up to them they performed a most artistic header in full sight of the party, which we all enjoyed, after we had discovered they had come out of it without injury. The poet dived through the air and alighted on the grass many feet in front of the machine, while the artist found himself under the machine, which illustrated the total depravity of inanimate things by jumping on him and pinning him to the sod. At Ipswich we drank again. Every pump is patronized by cycling tourists, and I dare not estimate the number of glasses of spring water that are consumed on a trip of this kind. Let me say that our tourists are teetotalers. I know this, because I heard one of the gentlemen say, after we had drunk from our fourth or fifth spring the first day, “I never saw such a lot of teetotal drinkers as cyclers are.”
Just out of Ipswich there was a breakdown. The Doctor’s axle yielded to his tremendously powerful pedaling, and a wrecked machine was cast upon the road. Here came in the usefulness of the drag with its cargo of spare machines. The wreck was taken on board and new machines were soon under the castaway crew.
Dinner was taken in picnic style, under the trees, in a nook of the Essex Woods, and ham sandwiches, chicken and eggs were washed down with water from a neighboring spring. At four P. M. we drew up in front of the Pavilion, at Gloucester. Then came the discussion over the distance. ’Tis with our cyclometers as with our watches, none go just alike, yet each believes his own. Some told us we had ridden thirty-two miles, others said thirty. My fatigue indicated a ride of a short distance, my hunger pointed to figures much larger than any cyclometer told.
That night there was music and dancing in the parlor. To see that merry company, who would think they had pedaled their “go-carts” over thirty miles of good, bad, and indifferent roads during the day? Molly favored the company with a number of recitations, the Doctor’s wife read an original poem which teemed with personalities, and Mrs. Manhattan played while we danced. We slept the sleep of the innocent that night, lulled to slumber by the breakers on the beach, just beneath our windows.
The second day is always the most important of the tour, for on it we circle Cape Ann. The road runs out of Gloucester at the north, belts the cape, and returns to Gloucester again from the west. Cape Ann projects into Massachusetts Bay, as though nature had given a great nose to the Old Commonwealth. The road follows the shore-line northward, then turns inland, and takes the visitor through a country of hills to the starting-point. I cannot believe that money or material wealth in any form could tempt a cycler to travel this road if it were not for the scenery. The length of the belt is only fifteen miles, but experienced riders suffer more fatigue in traveling these, than forty miles of ordinary roads would bring. A Boston newspaper pronounced it, a few years ago, an unfit road for ladies to ride over. And yet we have conquered it four times. Hill succeeds hill in constant succession, and sandy surfaces make the levels hard to ride upon. But we must pay for the good things of this life, and we cannot have Cape Ann scenery without compensation.
Twenty of us responded to the call of the pacemaker at nine o’clock Friday morning, and the drag was in position. Hector presented a pretty spectacle this morning behind the white wings of a dove which ornamented his tandem. The Doctor’s wife was suspected of this trick, perpetrated to show her appreciation of the way in which Hector sang his favorite song of “White Wings” for the entertainment of the company. If Hector’s beauty ranked with his inability to sing he would be another Adonis. The tourists were well avenged for the peace-destroying notes that had been forced upon them, for every shrill-voiced boy on the road that day—and we met several groups just let loose from school—saluted the decorated machine with the chorus of the well-worn song.
We went out of Gloucester with bright colors to the fore—on the cheeks of the ladies. Leaving Gloucester, we passed the old stone barn at Beaver Dam, then to Rockport, where we spent a pleasant half-hour at the quarries, looking down from the stone bridge that carries the roadway over the cut, into the great depths with the palisaded sides of still unquarried granite. Some of the great blocks but recently taken out were said to be twenty-five feet long and twenty tons in weight. We took the statement on faith, for we had neither measuring rod nor scales. A native took us to see a curio that is shown to visitors. A schooner ran into a sloop. The jibboom of the former went clear through the mast of the sloop and staid there. The mast with its unceremonious visitor lies upon the wharf to excite the wonder of those who behold it. “His Grace the Duke” cracked a very poor joke when he spoke of the masterly stroke of the schooner, and one man said that schooners had run into him without any such effect.