INVENTION AND DISCOVERY.

Tennessee has the latest thing in bicycles.

It seems that the wheel craze is just as rampant there as it is in our own fair city of New York, but that the facilities for owning machines are not as great there as here.

To overcome this, a bright-minded individual has invented a new device, which is certainly the most ingenious we have yet heard of.

It is a “nickel-in-the-slot” bicycle, and probably works somewhat on the principle of the “quarter-in-the-slot” gas-meter, which for every twenty-five cents put in, releases just that coin’s worth of gas to illuminate your house.

The bicycle, however, is arranged in such a manner that for every five-cent piece dropped in the slot it will run exactly five miles.

There is not the slightest fear of the rider forgetting to renew the nickel when he has ridden his five cents’ worth; nor is there any chance of his cheating the wheel out of an extra mile—­or half inch, for the matter of that.

When the end of the five miles is reached the honest wheel stops dead.  Whether it throws its rider over its head or not is a matter of no moment to it.  It stops then and there, and refuses to move another foot until it is re-fed with a fresh nickel.  Then it will bound along again as peacefully as before.

The story does not say whether a device in the form of a small red flag shoots out from any portion of the wheel to give a warning when the next “lap’s” rent is due.  But without some such plan we should doubt whether this kind of wheel would ever become very popular; for while four miles and three quarters might be ridden with much peaceful enjoyment, the last quarter of a mile would be filled with terrors that would spoil the pleasure of the nicest ride ever attempted.

G.H.R.

LETTERS FROM OUR YOUNG FRIENDS.

Dear editor: 

Where can the “pocket protector” and scissors-sharpening
machine, mentioned in the great Round World, be obtained. 
Mrs. M.F.

Northfield, Minn., Aug. 4th, 1897.

DEAR MADAM: 

We are not able to tell you where the above articles are manufactured, but you could obtain them through the agency of any reliable, first-class hardware store.  In all such stores they have illustrated catalogues of the various articles manufactured in their line of goods, and you should have no difficulty in finding both the pocket protector and the scissors sharpener.

Editor.

Dear editor: