Untitled

Waikato Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 2346, 23 July 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

Tmk other night (says the Melbourne Leader) a cyclist who had a great idea of winning the ten guinea trophy offered to the rider of the host illuminated bicycle iu a certain lantern parade, smeared his bicycle all over with phosphorus and then rode it down a street to see how it looked. The night was dark, and the effect very strange. The whole machine glowed fervidly as it moved noisly along the quiet road. Presently, a horse and trap approached. The animal sniffed and snorted thrice, violently plunged, turned round and rushed off in the direction it came. At the same time two young girls, who were standing at a garden gate, shrieked and rushed inside, telling their father they had seen a ghost. “Nonsense, girls,’ said the father, an old Cornish farmer, as he picked up a cudgel, and with a remark that lin’d settle the ghost, walked down the garden and through the gate, intending to cross the road and take up a stand behind a tree. When half way across he glanced up the road, and his hair fairly stood on end, and Ids blood curdled, for there, not twenty yards away, was the white apparition spec-lily approaching. A moment later the wheel of the bicycle struck him on the bridge of the nose, while the cyclist tumbled headlong to the ground. The old man shrieked, the eirls rushed out in hysterics, and the wheelman picked himself up, apologised, an-i just got away as two policemen arrived on the scene.