Always and ever Harte & Perkins kept their fingers on the pulse of their reading public. The safety bicycle was the fashion, in those days, and Harte & Perkins were usually first to exploit a fashion or a fad in their story columns. Whenever they had a story with a particularly popular and striking theme, it was their habit to flood the country with sample copies of _The Weekly Guest_, breaking off a generous installment of the serial in such a breathless place that the reader was forced to buy succeeding issues of the _Guest_ in order to get the rest of the story. So that is what the change in their publishing schedule meant. They wanted to boom the circulation of the _Guest_ with a bicycle story. Edwards shelved Bessie the beautiful at the 7th installment and threw himself into the tears, fears and chivalry of "The Bicycle Belle." This was on May 12. Three days later, on May 15, he forwarded two installments of the bicycle story for Harte & Perkins' inspection. On May 16, before these installments had reached the publishers, Edwards was requested as follows: "As we shall not be able to begin, in the Guest, your story, 'Bessie, the Beautiful Blind Girl,' until after January the first, next, it will be well to change the scene to a winter setting. This can be very easily done in the two installments that we have on hand, if you will make a note of it and keep it up for the balance of the story. In the first installment we will show the girl leaping into the river with a few cakes of ice floating about, and in the scene where she is expelled from the house there will be plenty of snow. It will make a more effective picture and be more seasonable for the story." More trouble! Harte & Perkins had two installments, and did not seem to know that Edwards had five more installments on hand, pending the completion of the bicycle yarn. But he was ready to turn summer into winter, or day into night, in order to make good. On May 18 he received a report on the two installments of the bicycle story. "The two installments of 'The Bicycle Belle' have been read and approved by our editor, who says that the story opens very well, with plenty of animated action, briefly yet graphically pictured. You seem to have caught our idea exactly, and we would be pleased to have you go ahead with the story, finishing it before you again take up 'Bessie, the Beautiful Blind Girl.'" On June 3 Edwards sent installments three to sixteen of the bicycle story, which was the complete manuscript. Ten days later he was informed: "'The Bicycle Belle' is crowded with dramatic action and is just what we want. In the next it would be well to have a little more of the female element just to demonstrate that 'Stella Edwards' is up-to-date." None the less pleasant was this news, contained in a letter dated June 18: