"In 1895 Frances Willard, the tightly laced president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, wrote a book called "How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle" (described in "Bicycling" magazine as "the greatest book ever written on learning to ride"), in which she praised the bicycle she learned to ride late in life, and which she named "Gladys", for its "gladdening effect" on her health and political optimism.