[crashryan]

Interesting antique humor. Somehow it reminds me of satirical pokes taken at hippies back in the 60s, but without the drugs.

It also reminded me of a recent discussion about early bicycles. Here they're the small-wheeled "bone-shakers," but they're called "hobbies." Wikipedia tells us that the official boneshakers date from the late 1850s. The bikes pictured here are an earlier (from 1818) German bike, "the world's first balance bicycle [which] quickly became popular in both the United Kingdom and France, where it was sometimes called a draisine (German and English), draisienne (French), a vélocipède (French), a swiftwalker, a dandy horse (as it was very popular among dandies) or a Hobby horse. It was made entirely of wood and metal and despite the condition of the roads at the time was sometimes ridden for long distances. "

Link to the book: The Dandy's Perambulations