August 22 Sunday – The Boston Daily Globe ran “Mark Twain As A Wheelman,” p.8, Aug. 23, 1886 about his struggles on the bicycle.

HARTFORD, August 22. — Samuel L. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, undertook to ride a bicycle at about the same time that his pastor began, and his not happy in the sport. The teacher of Mr. Clemens during the first weeks of his wheeling tells this story of him:

      Mr. Clemens objected to assuming a costume suitable to the exercise, and one day started out to ride wearing a long linen duster over his clothes. His teacher gently suggested that it might be inconvenient. Mr. Clemens thought not. The young man feared a fall, but Mark Twain said that he would risk it. They had not gone four rods from home, however, when he began to revile the napping thing, and in less that ten minutes the skirt was caught upon the wheel and carried up into the Y of the machine, and instantly the author of “Innocents Abroad” lay upon his face in the dirt, with the machine chattering about his ears. His companion alighted and ran to help him. The scope and volume of vituperation that smoked up through the spokes of that wheel are said to be unrepeatable by persons less gifted in the language than the victim. He was rescued from the machine, and crawling to his feet said with stilled fury, “Wait a minute.” Taking his knife from his pocket, the amateur wheelman opened it and with fierce determination cut the superfluous length from the linen coat until it took on the semblance of a butcher’s short frock, and then remounting his machine with the assistance of his trainer, he said, “Now I’ll buy a Norfolk jacket, as I should have done before.” Which he did. But he has never entirely conquered the skittish wheel.