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IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL

CHATS WITH ESMERALDA

BY i
THEO. STEPHENSON BROWNE

7 — We two will ridée
Lady mine,
At your pleasure, side by side,
Laugh and chat.

PeEOTHROP COMPANY

WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMFIELD

TO THE
MODERN MEN OF UZ;
MY

FRENCH, ENGLISH AND AMERICAN MASTERS.

a

ms

it;

III.

LY.

VE

VII.

CONTENTS.

A PRELIMINARY CHAT WITH ESMERALDA
The proper frame of mind — Dress —
Preparatory exercises.

SHALL YOU TAKE YOUR MOTHER, ESMERALDA ?
The first lesson— Various ways of
mounting — Slippery reins — Clucking —
After a ride.

CHAT DURING THE SECOND LESSON -
Equestrian language — Trotting with-
out a horse — Exercises in and out of
the saddle.

ESMERALDA’S TRIALS AT THE THIRD LESSON
Pounding the saddle — A critical spec-
tator — A few rein-holds.

ESMERALDA ON THE ROAD... ataes
Good and bad and indifferent Uaces
A very little runaway.

THE ORDEAL OF A PRIVATE LESSON :
Voltes and half voltes — ‘‘ On the right
hand of the school” — Imagination as a
teacher.

ESMERALDA AT A Music RIDE ;
Sitting like a poker — The ways of the
bad rider.

34

50

64

83

97

RT

VIII.

IX.

At.

XII.

XIII.

CONTENTS.

ESMERALDA IN CLass.. . . : patie
Keeping distances — bits — Pica
place in the saddle — Exercises to correct
nervous stiffness.

ELEMENTARY MILITARY EVOLUTIONS . .«
‘* Forward, forward, and again for-
ward!” — How to guide a horse easily.

CHAT DURING AN EXERCISE RIDE . .
The deeds of the three-legged trotter
— The omniscient rider — Backing a step
or two — Fun in the dressing-room.

ESMERALDA IS MANAGED ...« « «© e
Intervals — The secret of learning to
ride.

CHAT ABOUT THE HABIT. . . Pas

Riding-dress in history amid fiction —

Cloth, linings and sewing — Boots,
gloves and hats.

CHAT ABOUT TEACHERS .. . site aM
Foreign and native ‘nntractens — Why
American women learn slowly — ‘‘ Keep

riding!”

. 11

« 126

- 141

- 158

. 174

- 196

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

r

Impatient to mount and ride.
Longfellow.

WZND you want to learn how to ride,
Esmeralda ?

Why? Because? Reason good
and sufficient, Esmeralda ; to require
anything more definite would be brutal, although
an explanation of your motives would render
the task of directing you much easier.

As you are an American, it is reasonable to
presume that you desire to learn quickly; as
you are youthful, it is certain that you earnestly
wish to look pretty in the saddle, and as youare
a youthful American, there is not a shadow of
a doubt that your objections to authoritative
teaching will be almost unconquerable, and that
you will insist upon being treated, from the very
beginning, as if your small head contained the

7

8 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

knowledge of a Hiram Woodruff or of an
Archer. Perhaps you may find a teacher who
will comply with your wishes ; who will be ex-
ceedingly deferential to your little whims; will
unhesitatingly accept your report of your own
sensations and your hypotheses as to their
cause; and, Esmeralda, when once your eyes
behold that model man, be content, and go and
take lessons of another, for either he is a pre-
tentious humbug, careless of everything except
his fees, or he is an ignoramus.

It may not be necessary that you should be
insulted or ridiculed in order to become a rider,
although there are girls who seem utterly im-
pervious to teaching by gentle methods. Is it
not a matter of tradition that Queen Victoria
owes her regal carriage to the rough drill-ser-
geant, who, after making endless respectful
suggestions, with no effect upon his pupil, hor- |
rified her governess, and astonished her, by
sharply saying: “ A pretty Queen you'll make
with that dot-and-go-one gait!’ Up went the
little chin, back went the shoulders, down went
the elbows, and, in her wrath, the little princess
did precisely what the old soldier had been

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 9

striving to make her do; but his delighted cry
of “Just right!’’ was a surprise to her, inas-
much as she had been conscious of no muscular
effort whatever. From that time forth, zzcesszt
regina.

You may not need such rough treatment, but
it is necessary that you should be corrected
every moment and almost every second until
you learn to correct yourself, until every muscle
in your body becomes self-conscious, and until
an improper position is almost instantly felt as
uncomfortable, and the teacher who does not
drill you steadily and continuously, permits you
to fall into bad habits.

If you were a German princess, Esmeralda,
you would be compelled to sit in the saddle for
many an hour without touching the reins, while
your patient horse walked around a tan bark
ring, and you balanced yourself and straightened
yourself, and adjusted arms, shoulders, waist,
knees and feet, under the orders of a drill-ser-
geant, who might, indeed, sugar-coat his phrases
with “Your Highness,” but whose intonations
would say “ You must,” as plainly as if he were
drilling an awkward squad of peasant recruits.

10 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

If you were the daughter of a hundred earls,
you would be mounted on a Shetland pony and
shaken into a good seat long before you outgrew
short frocks, and afterwards you would be
trained by your mother or older sisters, by the
gentlemen of your family, or, perhaps, by some
trusted old groom, or in a good London riding-
school, and, no matter who your instructor might
be, you would be compelled to be submissive
and obedient.

But you object that you cannot afford to
pay for very careful, minute, and long-contin-
ued training; that you must content yourself
with such teaching as you can obtain by riding
in a ring under the charge of two or three mas-
ters, receiving such instruction as they find time
to give you while maintaining order and looking
after an indefinite number of other pupils.
Your real teacher in that case must be yourself,
striving assiduously to obey every order given
to you, no matter whether it appears unreason-
able or seems, as the Concord young woman
said, “in accordance with the latest scientific
developments and the esoteric meaning of dif-
ferentiated animal existences.” That sentence,

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 11

by the way, silenced her master, and nearly
caused him to have a fit of illness from suppres-
sion of language, but perhaps it might affect
your teacher otherwise, and you would better
reserve it for that private mental rehearsal of
your first lesson which you will conduct in your
maiden meditation.

You are to be your own best teacher, you
understand, and you may be encouraged to
know that one of the foremost horsemen in the
country says: “I have had many teachers, but
my best master was here,” touching his fore-
head. ‘“ Where do you ride, sir?’’ asked one of
his pupils, after vainly striving with reins and
whip, knee, heel and spur to execute a move-
ment which the master had compelled his
horse to perform while apparently holding him-
self as rigid as bronze. ‘I ride here, sir,’ was
the grim answer, with another tap on the
forehead.

And first, Esmeralda, being feminine, you
wish to know what you are to wear.

Until you have taken at least ten lessons, it
would be simply foolishness for you to buy any
special thing to wear, except a plain flannel skirt,

12 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

the material for which should not cost you more
than two dollars and a half. MHarper’s Bazar
has published two or three patterns, following
which any dressmaker can make a skirt quite
good enough for the ring. A jersey, a Norfolk
jacket, a simple street jacket or even an ordi-
nary basque waist ; any small, close-fitting hat,
securely pinned to your hair, and very loose
gloves will complete a dress quite suitable for
private lessons, and not so expensive that you
need grudge the swift destruction certain to
come to all equestrian costumes. Nothing is
more ludicrous than to see a rider clothed in a
correct habit, properly scant and unhemmed, to
avoid all risks while taking fences and hedges
in a hunting country, with her chimney-pot hat
and her own gold-mounted crop, her knowing
little riding-boots and buckskins, with outfit
enough for Baby Blake and Di Vernon and Lady
Gay Spanker, and to see that young woman
dancing in her saddle, now here and now there,
clinging to the pommel, pulling at the reins in
a manner to make a rocking-horse rear, and
squealing tearfully and jerkily: ‘‘ Oh, ho-ho-oh,
wh-h-hat m-m-makes h-h-him g-g-go s-s-s-so ?”

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 13

If you think it possible that you may be easily
discouraged, and that your first appearance in
the riding-school will be your last, you need not
buy any skirt, for you will find several in the
school dressing-room, and, for once, you may
submit to wearing a garment not your own.
Shall you buy trousers or tights? Wait till you
decide to take lessons before buying either, first
to avoid unnecessary expense, and second, be-
cause until experience shall show you what kind
of a horsewoman you are likely to be, you can-
not tell which will be the more suitable and
comfortable. Laced boots, a plain, dark under-
skirt, cut princess, undergarments without a
wrinkle, and no tight bands to compress veins,
or to restrain muscles by adding their resistance
to the force of gravitation make up the list of
details to which you must give your attention
before leaving home. If you be addicted to
light gymnastics, you will find it beneficial to
practise a few movements daily, both before
taking your first lesson and as long as you may
continue to ride.

First — Hold your shoulders square and per-
fectly rigid, and turn the head toward the right
four times, and then to the left four times.

14 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

Second — Bend the head four times to the
right and four times to the left.

Third — Bend the head four times to the back
and four times to the front. These exercises
will enable you to look at anything which may
interest you, without distracting the attention
of your horse, as you might do if you moved
your shoulders, and thus disturbed your equilib-
rium on his back. Feeling the change, he nat-
urally supposes that you want something of
him, and when you become as sensitive as you
should be, you will notice that at such times he
changes his gait perceptibly.

Fourth — Bend from the waist four times to
the right, four to the left, four times forward
and four times backward. These movements
will not only make the waist flexible, but will
strengthen certain muscles of the leg.

Fifth — Execute any movement which expe-
rience has shown you will square your shoulders
and flatten your back most effectually. Throw
the hands backward until they touch one an-
other, or bring your elbows together behind
you, if you can. Hold the arms close to the
side, the elbows against the waist, the forearm

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 15

at right angles with the arm, the fists clenched,
with the little finger down and the knuckles fac-
ing each other, and describe ellipses, first with
one shoulder, then with the other, then with
both. This movement is found in Mason’s
School Gymnastics, and is prescribed by M. de
Bussigny in his little manual for horsewom-
en, and it will prove admirable in its effects.
Stretch the arms at full length above the head,
the palms of the hands in front, the thumbs
touching one another, and then carry them
straight outward without bending the elbows,
and bend them down, the palms still in front,
until the little finger touches the leg. This
movement is recommended by Mason and also
by Blaikie, and as it is part of the West Point
“setting up’”’ drill, it may be regarded as con-
sidered on good authority to be efficacious in
producing an erect carriage. Stand as upright
aS you can, your arms against your side, the
forearm at right angles, as before, and jerk your
elbows downward four times.

Sixth — Sit down on the floor with your feet
stretched straight before you, and resting on
their heels, and drop backward until you are

16 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

lying flat, then resume your first position, keep-
ing your arms and forearms at right angles dur-
ing the whole exercise. Still sitting, bend as
far to the right as you can, and then bend as
far as possible to the left, resuming a perfectly
erect position between the movements, and
keeping your feet and legs still. Rising, stand
on your toes and let yourself down fifty times ;
then stand on your heels, and raise and lower
the toes fifty times. The firmer you hold your
arms and hands during these movements, the
better for you, Esmeralda, and for the horse
who will be your first victim.

Already one can seem to see him, poor,
innocent beast, miserable in the memories of
an army of beginners, his mouth so accus-
tomed to being jerked in every direction,
without anything in particular being meant by
it, that neither Arabia nor Mexico can furnish
a bit which would surprise him, or startle
his four legs from their propriety. No cow
is more placid, no lamb more gentle; he
would not harm a tsetse fly or kick a snapping
terrier. His sole object in life is to keep him-
self and his rider out of danger, and to betake

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 17

himself to that part of the ring in which the
least labor should be expected of him. The
tiny girls and bright little boys who ride him
call him “dear old Billy Buttons,” or “ darling
Gypsy,” or “nice Sir Archer.”” Heaven knows
what he calls them in his heart! Were he
human, it would be something to be expressed
by dashes and “d’s”’; but, being a horse, he is
silent, and shows his feelings principally by
heading for the mounting-stand whenever he
thinks that a pupil’s hour is at an end.

Why that long face, Esmeralda? Must you
do all those exercises? Bless your innocent
soul,no! Dress yourself and run away. The
exercises will be good for you, but they are not
absolutely necessary. Remember, however,
that your best riding master is behind your
own pretty forehead, and that your brain can
save your muscles many a strain and many a
pound of labor. And remember, too, that, in
riding, as in everything else, to him that hath
shall be given, and the harder and firmer your
muscles when you begin, the greater will be
the benefit which you will derive from your
rides, and the more you will enjoy them. The

18 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

pale and weary invalid may gain flesh and color
with every lesson, but the bright and healthy
pupil, whose muscles are like iron, whose heart
and lungs are in perfect order, can ride for
hours without weariness, and double her strength
in a comparatively short time.

But — Esmeralda, dear, before you go — whis-
per! Why do you want to take riding lessons?
Theodore asked you to go out with him next
Monday, and Nell said that she would lend you
her habit, and you thought that you would take
three lessons and learn to ride? You did, eh?
Three lessons! There, go and dress, child;
go and dress!

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 19

ER

Bring forth the horse!
Byron.

EING ready to start, Esmeralda, the
question now arises: “Is a riding-
school,” as the girl asked about the
new French play, “a place to which

one can take her mother?” Little girls too
young to dress themselves should be attended
by their mothers or by their maids, but an older
girl no more needs guardianship at riding-school
than at any other place at which she receives;
instruction, and there is no more reason why
her mother should follow her into the ring than
into the class-room.

Her presence, even if she preserve absolute:
silence, will probably embarrass both teacher
and pupil, and although her own children may
not be affected by it, it will be decidedly, trouble-
some to the children of other mothers...

If, instead of being quiet, she talk, and it is;
the nature of the mother who accompanies. herr

20 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

daughter to riding-school to talk volubly and
loudly, she will become a nuisance, and evena
source of actual danger, by distracting the at-
tention of the master from his pupils, and the
attention of the pupils from their horses, to say
nothing of the possibility that some of her
pretty, ladylike little screams of, ‘‘Oh, darling,
I know you're tired!” ‘Don’t you want to dis-
mount, dear?’ or, “Oh, what a horrid horse;
see him jump!” may really frighten some lucky
animal whose acquaintance has included no
women but the sensible.

If she be inclined to laugh at the awkward
beginners, and to ridicule them audibly — but
really, Esmeralda, it should not be necessary to
consider such an action, impossible in a well-
bred woman, unlikely in a woman of good feel-
ing! Leave your mother, if not at home, in the
dressing-room or the reception room, and go to
the mounting-stand alone.

In some schools you may ride at any time,
but the usual morning hours for ladies’ lessons
are from nine o’clock until noon, and the after-
noon hours from two o’clock until four.

Some masters prefer that their pupils should

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 21

have fixed days and hours for their lessons, and
others allow the very largest liberty. For your
own sake it is better to have a regular time for
your lessons, but if you cannot manage to do
so, do not complain if you sometimes have to
wait a few minutes for your horse, or for your
master.

The school is not carried on entirely for
your benefit, although you will at first assume
that it is. Asa rule,a single lesson will cost
two dollars, but a ten-lesson ticket will cost but
fifteen dollars, a twenty-lesson ticket twenty-
five dollars, and a ticket for twenty exercise
rides twenty dollars. In schools which give
music-rides, there are special rates for the even-
ings upon which they take place, but you need
not think of music-rides until you have had at
least the three lessons which you desire.

Buy your ticket before you go to the dressing-
room, and ask if you may have a key to a locker.
Dress as quickly as you can, and if there be no
maid in the dressing-room, lock up your street
clothing and keep your key. If there be a
maid, she will attend to this matter, and will
assist you in putting on your skirt, showing you

22 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

that it buttons on the left side, and that you
must pin down the basque of your jersey or
your jacket in the back, unless you desire it to
wave wildly with every leap of your horse.
Flatter not yourself that lead weights will pre-
vent this! When a horse begins a canter that
sends you, if your feelings be any gauge, eight-
een good inches nearer the ceiling, do you think
that an ounce of lead will remain stationary ?
Give a final touch to your hairpins and hatpins,
button your gloves, pull the rubber straps of
your habit over your right toe and left heel, and
you are ready.

In most schools, you will be made to mount
from the ground, and you will find it surpris-
ingly and delightfully easy to you. What it
may be to the master who puts you into the
saddle is another matter, but nine out of ten
teachers will make no complaint, and will assure
you that you do very well.

If you wish to deceive any other girl’s incon-
siderate mother whom you may find comfortably
seated in a good position for criticism, and to
make her suppose that you are an old rider,
keep silence. Do not criticise your horse or his

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 23

equipments, do not profess inability to mount,
but when your master says ‘“ Now!”’ step for-
ward and stand facing in the same direction as
your horse, placing your right hand on the
upper pommel of the two on the left of the
saddle.

Set your left foot in whichever hand he holds
out for it. Some masters offer the left, and
some the right, and some count for a pupil, and
others prefer that she should count for herself.
The usual “One, two, three!’ means, one,
rest the weight strongly on the right foot; two,
bend the right knee, keeping the body perfectly
erect ; three, spring upward from the right foot,
turning very slightly to the left, so as to place
yourself sidewise on the saddle, your right hand
toward the horse’s head. i

Some masters offer a shoulder as a support
for a pupil’s left hand, and some face toward the
horse’s head and some toward his tail, so it is
best for you to wait a little for directions,
Esmeralda, and not to suppose that, because
you know all about Lucy Fountain’s way of
mounting a horse, or about James Burdock’s
tuition of Mabel Vane, there is no other method
of putting a lady in the saddle.

24 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

After your first lesson, you will find it well to
practise springing upward from the right foot,
holding your left on a hassock, or a chair rung,
your right hand raised as if grasping the pom-
mel, your shoulders carefully kept back, and
your body straight. It is best to perform this
exercise before a mirror, and when you begin to
think that you have mastered it, close your eyes,
give ten upward springs and then look at your-
self. A hopeless wreck, eh? Not quite so bad
as that, but, before, you unconsciously corrected
your position by the eye, and you must learn to
do it entirely by feeling. You will probably
improve very much on a second trial, because
your shoulders will begin to be sensitive. Why
not practise this exercise before your first les-
son? Because you should know just how your
master prefers to stand, in order to be able to
imagine him standing as he really will. It is
not unusual to see riders of some experience
puzzled and made awkward by an innovation on
what they have regarded as the true and only
method of mounting, although, when once the
right leg and wrist are properly trained, a
woman ought to be able to reach the saddle

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 25

without caring what is her escort’s method of
assistance.

Mounting from a high horseblock is a matter
of being fairly lifted into the saddle, and you
cannot possibly do it improperly. It is easy,
‘but it gives you no training for rides outside
the school, and masters use it, not because they
approve of it, but because their pupils, not
knowing how easy it is to mount from the
ground, often desire it.

But, being in the saddle, turn so as to face
your horse’s head, put your right knee over the
pommel, and slip your left foot into the stirrup.
Then rise on your left foot and smooth your
skirt, a task in which your master will assist
you, and take your reins and your whip from
him.

How shall you hold your reins? As your
master tells you! Probably, he will give you but
one rein at first, and very likely will direct you
to hold it in both hands, keeping them five or
six inches apart, the wrists on a level with the
elbows or even a very little lower, and he is not
likely to insist on any other details, knowing that
it will be difficult for you to attain perfection in

26 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

these. An English master might give you a
single rein to be passed outside the little finger,
and between the forefinger and middle finger,
the loop coming between the forefinger and
thumb, and being held in place by the thumb.
Then he would expect you to keep your right
shoulder back very firmly, but a French master
will tell you that it is better to learn to keep
the shoulder back while holding a rein in the
right hand, and an American master will usually
allow you to take your choice, but, until you
have experience, obey orders in silence.

And now, having taken your whip, draw your-
self back in your saddle so as to feel the pom-
mel under your right knee; sit well towards the
right, square your shoulders, force your elbows
well down, hollow your waist a little, and start.
He won’t go? Of course he will not, until bid-
den to do so, if he know his business. Bend
forward the least bit in the world, draw very
slightly on the reins, and rather harder on the
right, so as to turn him from the stand, and
away he walks, and you are in the ring. You
had no idea that it was so large, and you feel
as if lost on a western prairie, but you are in no

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 27

danger whatsoever. You cannot fall off while
your right knee and left foot are in place, and
if you deliberately threw yourself into the tan,
you would be unhurt, and the riding-school
horse knows better than to tread on anything
unusual which he may find in his way.

Now, Esmeralda, keep your mind-— No, your
saddle is not turning; it is well girthed. You
feel as if it were? Pray, how do you know how
you would feel if a saddle were to turn? Did
you ever try it? And your saddle is not too
large! Neither is it too small! And there
is nothing at all the matter with your horse!
Now, Esmeralda, keep your mind— _ No, that
other girl is not going to ride youdown. MHer
horse would not allow her, if she endeavored to
do so. The trouble is that she does not guide
her horse, but is worrying herself about stay-
ing on his back, when she should be thinking
about making him turn sharp corners and go
straight forward. Regard her as a warning,
Esmeralda, and keep your mind— What is
the matter with the reins? Apparently they
are oiled, for they have slipped from under your
thumbs, and your horse is wandering along with

28 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

drooping head, looking as if training to play the
part of the dead warrior’s charger at a military
funeral.

Shorten your reins now, carefully! Not quite
so much, or your horse will think that you
intend to begin to trot, and do not lean
backward, or he will fancy that you wish him
to back or to stop. The poor thing has to
guess at what a pupil wishes, and no wonder
that he sometimes mistakes.

But, Esmeralda, keep your mind on those
thumbs and hold them close to your forefingers.
Driving will give no idea of the slipperiness of
leather, but after your first riding lesson you
will wonder why it is not used to floor roller-
skating rinks. But remember that your reins
are for your horse’s support, not for yours; they
are the telegraph wires along which you send
despatches to him, not parallel bars upon which
your weight is to depend. Hitherto, you have
not ridden an inch. Your horse has strolled
about, and you have not dropped from his back,
and that is not riding, but now you shall begin.

In a large ring, pupils are required to keep to
the wall when walking, as this gives the horse a

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 29

certain guide, but in small rings the rule is to
keep to the wall when trotting, so as to improve
every foot of space, and to walk about six feet
from the wall, not ina circle, but describing a
rectangle. New pupils are always taught to
turn to the right, and to make all their move-
ments in that direction. Hold your thumbs
firmly in place, and draw your right hand a
very little upward and inward, touching your
whip lightly to the horse’s right side, and turn-
ing your face and leaning your body slightly
to the right.

The instant that the corner is turned drop
your hand, keeping the thumb in place, square
your shoulders, look straight between your
horse’s ears, and then allow your eyes to range
upward as far as possible without losing sight
of him altogether. No matter what is going on
about you. Very likely, the criticising mamma
on the mounting-stand is scolding sharply about
nothing. Possibly, a dear little boy is fairly fly-
ing about the ring on a pony that seems to have
cantered out of a fairy tale, and a marvel-
lously graceful girl, whom you envy with your
whole soul, is doing pirouettes in the centre
of the ring.

30 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

All that is not your business. Your sole
concern is to keep your body in position, and
your mind fixed on making your horse obey
you, doing nothing of his own will. Stop him
now and then by leaning back, and drawing on
the reins, not with your body, but with your
hands. Then lean forward and go on, but if
he should remain planted as fast as the Great
Pyramid, if when started he should go like a
snail, if he should refuse to pay any attention
to the little taps of your left heel and the
touches of your whip, nay, if he should lie down
and pretend to die, like a trick horse in a circus,
don’t cluck. No good riding master will teach
a pupil to cluck or will permit the practice to
pass unreproved, and riding-school horses do
not understand it, and are quite as likely to
start at the cluck of a rider on the other side
of the ring as they are when a similar noise is
made by the person on their own backs.

But now, just as you have shortened your reins
for the fortieth time or so, your master rides up —
beside you. You told him of your little three-
lesson plan, and, being wise in his generation, he
smilingly assented to it. ‘Shall we trot?” he

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 51

asks, in anagreeable voice. ‘Shorten your reins,
now! Don’t pull on them! Right shoulder
back! Now rise from the saddle as I count,
mene, two, three;:four)’- Oi we go!” “You
would like to know what he meant by “off!”’
“Off,” indeed! You thought you were “off”’
the saddle. You have been bounced up and
down mercilessly, and have gasped, “Stop him!”
before you have been twice around the ring,
and not one corner have you been able to turn
properly. As for your elbows, you know that
they have been flying all abroad,. but still — it
was fun, and you would like to try again. You
do try again, and, at last, you are conscious of
a sudden feeling of elasticity, of sympathy with
your horse, of rising when he does, and then
your master looks at you triumphantly, and
says: ‘ You rose that time,’ and leaves you to
go to some other pupil. And then you walk
your horse again, trying to keep in position,
and you make furtive little essays at trotting
by yourself, and find that you cannot keep your
horse to the wall, although you pull your hardest
at his left rein, the reason being that, uncon-
sciously, you also pull at the right rein, and that

82 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

he calmly obeys what the reins tell him and goes
straight forward. Then your master offers to
help you by lifting you, grasping your right arm
with his left hand, and you make one or two
more circuits of the ring, and then the hour is
over and you dismount and go to the dressing-
room.

Tired, Esmeralda? A little,and you do won-
der whether you shall not be a bruised piece of
humanity to-morrow. Not if your flesh be as
hard as any girl’s should be in these days of
gymnasiums, but if you have managed to bruise
a muscle or to strain one, lay a bottle of hot
water against it when you go to bed and it will
not be painful in the morning. If, in spite of
warnings, you have been so careless about your
underclothing as to cause a blister, a bit of
muslin saturated with vaseline, with a drop of
tincture of benzoin rubbed into it, makes a
plaster which will end the smart instantly.

This is not a physician’s prescription, but is
that of a horseman who for years led the best
riding class in Boston, and it is asserted that
nobody was ever known to be dissatisfied with
its effects. Muffle yourself warmly, Esmeralda,

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 33

and hasten home, for nothing is easier than to
catch cold after riding. Air your frock and
cloak before an open fire to volatilize the slight
ammoniacal scent which they must inevitably
contract in the locker, and then be as good to
yourself as the hostler will be to your poor
horse. That is to say, give yourself a sponge
bath in hot water, with a dash of Sarg’s soap
and almond meal in it, rubbing dry witha Turk-
ish towel, and then dress and go down to dinner.

Looking at your glowing face and shining
eyes, your father will tell your mother that she
should have gone also, but when he marks the
havoc which you make with the substantial part
of the meal, and sees that your appetite for
dessert is twice as good as usual, he will reflect
upon his butcher’s and grocer’s bills, and, con-
sidering what they would be with provision to
make for two such voracious creatures, he will
say, “No, Esmeralda, don’t take your mother!”

34 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

III,

Up into the saddle,
Lithe and light, vaulting she perched.
Flayne.

y three lessons will be enough to make
(EAN you a horse woman, and that ; by

next Monday you will be able to join
the road party, and witch the world with your |
accomplishments?

Very well, array yourself for conquest and
come to the school. Talk is cheap, according
to a proverb more common than elegant; but it
is sinful to waste the cheapest of things. While
you dress, you will meditate upon the sensation
which it is your intention to make in the ring,
and upon the humiliation which you will heap
upon your riding master by showing wonderful
ability to risein the saddle. Although not quite
ready to assert ability to ride hour after hour like
a mounted policeman, you feel certain that you
could ride as gracefully as he, and perhaps you
are right, for official position does not confer

A you still think, Esmeralda, that

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 35

wisdom in equitation. To say nothing of police-
men, it is not many seasons since an ambitious
member of the governor's staff presented him-
self before a riding master to “take a lesson,
just to get used to it, you know; got to review
some regiments at Framingham to-morrow.”
And when, after some trouble, he had been
landed in the saddle, neyer a strap had he, and
long before his lesson hour was finished, he was
a spectacle to make a Prussian sentinel giggle
while on duty. .
And for your further encouragement, Esmer-
alda, know that it is but a few years ago that a
riding master, in answer toa rebellious pupil who
defended some sin against Baucher with, “ Mr.
—of the governor’s staff always does so,” re-
torted, ‘There is just one man on the gov-
ernor’s staff who can ride, and I taught him ;
and if he had ridden like that!” An awful si-
lence expressed so many painful possibilities
that the pupil was meek and humble ever after,
and yet it was not written in any newspaper
that any of those ignorant colonels were
thrown from their saddles in public, nor did
the strapless gentleman furnish amusement to

36 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

a
civilian or soldier by rolling on the grass at
Framingham.

The truth is, that the number of persons
able to judge of riding is smaller than the num-
ber able to ride, and that number is rather less
than one in a hundred of those who appear on
horseback either in the ring or on the road; but
Boston could furnish a legion of men and women
who find healthful enjoyment in the saddle, and
who look passably well while doing it, and possi-
bly you may add yourself to their ranks after a
very few lessons, although there is— You are
ready ? Come, then!

Into the saddle well enough, thanks to your
master, but why that ghastly pause? Turn in-
stantly, place your knee over the pommel and
thrust your foot into the stirrup, if you possibly
can, without waiting for assistance. Teachers
of experience, riding masters, dancing masters,
musicians, artists, gymnasts, will unite in telling
you that unless a pupil’s mental qualities be
rather extraordinary, it is more difficult to im-
part knowledge at a second lesson than at
the first, simply because the pupil gives less

attention, expecting his muscles to work me-
chanically.

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 37

Undoubtedly, after long training, fingers will
play scales, and flying feet whirl their owner
about a ballroom without making him conscious
of every muscular extension and contraction,
but this facility comes only to those who, in the
beginning, fix an undivided mind upon what
they are doing, and who never fall into wilful
negligence.

Keep watch of yourself, manage yourself
as assiduously as you watch and manage your
horse, and ten times more assiduously than
you would watch your fingers at the piano,
or your feet in the dancing class, because you
must watch for two, for your horse and for your-
self. If you give him an incorrect signal, he
will obey it, you will be unprepared for his next
act, and in half a minute you will have a very
pretty misunderstanding on your hands.

But there is no reason for being frightened.
You cannot fall, and if your horse should show
any signs of actual misbehavior, you would find
your master at your right hand, with fingers of
steel to grasp your reins, and a voice accus-
tomed to command obedience from quadrupeds,
howsoever little of it he may be able to obtain

38 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

at first from well-meaning bipeds. You are per-
fectly safe with him, Esmeralda, not only be-
cause he knows how to ride, but because the
strongest of all human motives, self-interest, is
enlisted to promote your safety. ‘She said
she was afraid to risk her neck,” said an ex-
hausted teacher, speaking the words of frank-
ness to a spectator, as a timid and stupid pupil
disappeared into the dressing-room, “and I
told her that she could afford the risk better
than I. If she broke it, don’t you know, it
probably could not be mended, but mine might
be broken in trying to save her, and, at the
best, my reputation and my means of gaining a
livelihood would be gone forever in an instant.
It’s only a neck with her ; it’s life and wife and
babies that I risk, and I'll insure her neck.”
And when the stupid pupil, who was a lady in
spite of her dulness, came from the dressing-
room, calmed and quieted, and began to offer a
blushing apology, he repeated his remarks to
her, and so excellent was the understanding es-
tablished between them after this little incident
that she actually came to be a tolerable rider.
Feeling that he would tell her to do nothing

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 39

dangerous to her, she was ready at his command
to lie down on her horse’s back and to raise her-
self again and again, and, after doing this a few
times, and bending alternately to the right and
to the left, the saddle seemed quite homelike,
and to remain in it sitting pee was very
easy for a few moments.

Only for a few moments, however, for the
necessity of paying attention still remained,
as it does with you, and again she stiffened
herself, as you are doing now.

As Mr. Mead very justly says, in his “‘ Horse-
manship for Women,” a lesson may be learned
from a bag of grain set up on horseback, which
is, that while the lower part of your body should
settle itself almost lazily ingplace, the upper
part, which is comparatively light, should sway
slightly but easily with the horse’s motion.

Manage to ride behind the girl who was
teaching herself to do pirouettes the other day.
Her horse is walking rapidly, and you could
almost fancy that her prettily squared shoulders
were part of him, so sympathetically do they
respond to each step, but if you should let your
horse straggle against hers and frighten him,

40 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

you would see that no rock is more firmly seated
than she.

If it should please your master to require
you to perform the bending exercise, you will
feel the advantage of having practised it at
home, for it is infinitely easier in the saddle
than it is on the floor, and your riding master
will be exceedingly pleased at the ease with
which you effect it. There is no necessity
for telling him that the little feat is quite
familiar to you. The woman of sense keeps
as many of her doings secret as she can,
and the wise pupil confesses to no knowledge
except that derived from her master. Being, in
spite of his superior knowledge, a mortal man,
he will take twigg the pains with her, and a
hundredfold more pride in her if persuaded that
she owes everything to him.

There is no reason to worry about a little
stiffness during the first lessons. It is almost
entirely nervousness, and will disappear as soon
as you are quite comfortable and easy, but
the beautiful flexibility of the good horse-
woman comes only to her whose muscles
are perfectly trained, and it is surprising how

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL,. 41

few muscles there are to which one may not
give employment in an hour’s practice in
the ring. If you like, you may, without the
assistance of your master, lean forward to the
right side until your left shoulder touches your
horse’s crest, and when you are trotting it is
well now and then to lean forward and to the
right until you can see your horse’s forefeet, but
you would better not perform the same exercise
on the left side for the present, for you might
overbalance yourself and almost slip from the
saddle. If able, as you should be, to touch the
floor with your finger tips without bending your
knees, this little movement will be nothing to
you, but do zot bend to the left, Esmeralda.
Why not? Why, because if you will have the
truth, you are slipping toward the left already,
your right shoulder is drooping forward, and
your weight is hanging in your stirrup and pull-
ing your saddle to the left so forcibly that your
horse has lost all respect for you, and would be
thoroughly uncomfortable, were it not that you
have forgotten all about your thumbs, and have
allowed your reins to slip away from you, so
that he is going where he pleases, except when

42 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

you jerk him sharply to the right, and then he
shakes and tosses his head and goes on con-
tentedly, as one saying, “All things have an
end, even a new pupil’s hour.”

Now, sit well to the right, remembering the
meal sack; shorten your reins, keeping your
elbows down and your hands low. Shorten
them a very little more, so as to bring your
elbows further forward. When you stop, you
should not be compelled to jerk your elbows
back of your waist, but should bring them
into line with it, leaning back slightly, and
drawing yourself upward. Stop your horse
now, for practice. Do not speak to him dur-
ing your first lessons, except by your master’s
express command, but address him in his own
language, using your reins, your foot, and your
whip, if your master permit. ‘Why do you
make coquette with your horse?” asked a
French master of a pretty girl who was coax-
ingly calling her mount “a naughty, horrid
thing,” and casting glances fit to distract a man
on the ungrateful creature’s irresponsive crest.
“Your horse does not care anything at all about
you; don’t you think he does!” pursued he,

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 43

ungallantly. ‘You may coax me as much as
you like,’ said a Yankee teacher to a young
woman who was trying the “treat him kindly ”’
theory, and was calling her horse a “dear old
ducky darling ;) **and;wheweontinued, “I’m
rather fond of candy myself, but it isn’t coaxing
or lump sugar that will make that horse go.
It’s brains and reins and foot and whip.”

When you have a horse of your own, talk to
him as much as you like, and teach him your
language as an accomplishment, but address the
riding-school horse in his own tongue, until you
have mastered it yourself.

Now, adjust yourself carefully, lean for-
ward, extend your hands a very little, touch
your horse with your left heel, and, as soon
as he moves, sit erect and let your hands
resume their position. Hasten his steps until
he is almost trotting, before you strike him
with the whip. You can do this by very
slightly opening and shutting your fingers in
time with the slight pull which he gives with
his head at every step, by touches with your
heel, and by touches, not blows, with the whip,
and by allowing yourself, not to rise, but to sit

44 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

a little lighter with each step. It is not very
easy to do, and you need not be discouraged if
you cannot effect it after many trials. Some
masters will tell you to strike your horse on the
shoulder, and some will prefer that you should
strike him on the flank as a signal for trotting.
Those who prefer the former wil] tell you to
carry your whip pointing forward; the others
will tell you to carry it pointing backward, and
many masters will say that it makes little differ-
ence as long as it is carried gracefully, and as
long as you understand that it takes the place
of a leg on the right side of the horse. General
Anderson, in “ On Horseback,” lays down the
rule that a horse should never be struck on the
shoulder, as it will cause him to swerve, but use
your master’s horses in obedience to his orders.

Now, then, one, two, three, four! One, two,
three, four! You don’t seem to be astonishing
anybody very much, Esmeralda! Again, one,
two, three, four! Never mind! Sit down and
let the horse do the work. Keep your left heel
down, and your left knee close to the saddle.
Not close to the pommel, understand, but close to
the saddle. Try and imagine, if you like, that you

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 45

are carrying a dollar between the knee and the
saddle, after the West Point fashion, and do not
fret overmuch because youare not rising. If you
were a cavalryman riding with your troop, you
would not be allowed to rise, and to sit properly
while sitting close is an accomplishment not to
be despised. ‘Ow!’ What does that mean ?
Yourose without trying? Watch yourself care-
fully, and if such a phenomenon should occur
again, try to make it repeat itself by letting
yourself down into the saddle, and then rising
again quickly. But keep trotting! Count how
many times you trot around the ring, and men-
tally pledge yourself to increase the number of
circuits at your next lesson. And— “Cluck!”

Sit down in the saddle, Esmeralda! Lean
back a little, bring your left knee up against the
pommel, keeping the lower part of the leg close
against the saddle; keep your right knee in
place and your right foot and the lower part of
your right leg close to the saddle; guide your
horse, but do not otherwise exert yourself. How
do you like it? Delightful? Yes, with a good
_ horse it is as delightful as sitting in a rocking-
chair, but, if you were a rider of experience,

46 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

you would not allow your horse to enter upon
the gait without permission, but would bring
him back to the trot by slightly pulling first the
left rein and then the right, a movement which
is called sawing the mouth. The poor creature
is really not in fault. He heard the cluck given
by that complacent-looking man, trotting slowly
about, and not knowing how to use his reins
and knees in order to go faster, and he said to
himself: ‘‘ She is tired of trotting and wants a
rest ; so do I,” and away he went. If you had
been trying to rise, you might have been thrown,
for the greatest danger that you will encounter
in the school comes from rising while the horse
is ata canter. The cadence of the motion is
triple, instead of in common time like that of
the trot, and you will soon distinguish the dif-
ference, but eschew cantering at first. If you
once become addicted to it, you will never learn
to trot, or even to walk well.

Having had your little warning against
clucking, perhaps you will now sympathize
with the indignant Englishwoman who, having
been almost unseated by a similar mischance,
responded, when the clucking cause thereof

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 47

rode up to say that he was sorry that her
horse should behave so: ‘It wasn’t the horse
that was in fault, sir; it was a donkey.” But
now, try a round or two more of trotting,
then guide your horse carefully about the
ring two or three times, bring him up to the
mounting-stand, dismount, and go to the dress-
ing-room. You are rather warm, but not in the
least tired, and you have had “such a good
time,’ as you enthusiastically explain to every-
body who will listen to you, but as there is much
merry chatter going on from behind screens,
and as it is all to the same effect, nobody pays
much attention, and if you were cross and com-
plaining, everybody would laugh at you. A
riding-school is a place from which every woman
issues better contented than she entered, and
there is no sympathy for grumblers.

Remember to be careful about your wraps,
and that you may be able to ride better next
time, practise these exercises at home: Place
your knees together and heels together, adjust
your shoulders, hands and arms as if you were
in the saddle, and sit down as far as possible,
while keeping the legs vertical from the knee

48 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

down. Rise, counting “One,” sink again, rise
once more at ‘“ Two,” and continue through
three measures, common time. Rest a minute
and repeat until you area little weary. Nothing
is gained by doing too much work, but if you do
just enough of this between lessons, you cannot
possibly grow stiff. When you can do it fairly
well, try to do it first on one foot and then on
the other, and then bring your right foot in
front of your left knee, and, standing on your
left foot, assume, as nearly as possible, the
proper position for the saddle, and try to rise in
time. You will not find it very difficult, and
you will be compelled to keep your heel down
while doing it, especially if you put a block
about an inch thick under your left toe. You
may try doing it while sitting sidewise in a
chair, if it be difficult for you to poise yourself
on one foot, but a girl who cannot stand thus
for some time, long enough to lace her riding
boot, for instance, is much too weak for her own
good.

Take all your spare minutes for this work,
Esmeralda. Bob up and down in all the
secluded corners of the house; try to feel the

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 49

motion in the horse-cars —it will not need
much effort in many of them. And if you want
to be comfortable in a herdic, sit sidewise and
pretend that the seat isa horse. This is Mr.
Hurlbut’s rule for riding in an Irish “outside
car.’ In short, while taking your first riding-
lessons, walk, sit and think to the tune of

“One, two, three, four!
Near the wall,

Make him trot;
You cannot fall! ”

50 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

IV.

The horse does not attempt to fly;
He knows his powers, and so should I.
Spurgeon.
ILFUL will to water, eh, Esmeral-
da? You are determined to appear
in that riding party after your third
lesson, and you think that you “ will
look no worse than a great many others.” Un-
doubtedly, that is true, and more’s the pity,
but, since go you will, let us make the most of
the third lesson, and trust that you will return
in a whole piece, like Henry Clay’s pie.

You do not see why there is any more danger
on the road than in the ring, and you have never
been thrown! It would be unkind, in the face of
that “never,” to remind you that you have been
in the saddle precisely twice, and, really, there
is no more danger from your incompetency,
should it manifest itself on the road, than might
arise from its display in the ring, but with your
horse it is another matter. Having the whole
world before him, why not, he will meditate,

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 51

speed forth into space, and escape from the
hateful creature who jerks his head so cause-
lessly, making him sigh wearily for the days of
his unbroken coithood? He could endure it
within doors, because he has noticed that his
tormentor gives place to another every hour, and
pain may be borne when it is not monotonous;
but he remembers that there is no limit to the
time during which one human being may impel
him along an open road, and he also remembers
some very pretty friskings, delightful to him-
self, but disconcerting to his rider, and he ae
perform some of them.

Even if he should, he would not unseat a rider
well accustomed to school work, but you! You
actually rose in the saddle three times in succes-
sion, the other day, and where were your elbows
and where were your feet when you ceased ris-
ing, and long before your steady, quiet mount
understood that you desired him to walk?

Your master smiles indulgently when you
announce that this is your last practice lesson,
and says: “Very well, you shall ride Charlie,
to-day, at least for a little while, until some
others come in.” He himself mounts, moves.

52 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

off a pace or two, one of the assistant masters
puts you in the saddle, and before the groom
lets Master Charlie’s head go, your master says,
easily: “ Leave his reins pretty long, especially
the right one. Put your left knee close against
the pommel ; don’t try to rise until I tell you.
Ready. Now.”

You feel as if you were in a transformation
scene at the theatre. The windows of the ring
seem to run into one another, and at very short
intervals you catch a glimpse in the mirror of
a young woman, in a familiar looking Norfolk
jacket, sitting with her elbows as far behind her
as if held there by the Austrian plan of running
a broomstick in front of the arms and behind
the waist.

On and on! You earnestly wish to stop, but
are ashamed to say so. Close at your right
hand, pace for pace with you, rides your master,
keeping up an unbroken fire of brief ejacula-
tion: “Hands a little lower! Arms close to
the side! Shoulders square! Square! Draw
your right shoulder backward and upward!
Now down with your right elbow! Don’t pull
on the right rein! Don’t lift your hands!
You'll make him go faster!”

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 53

“I like this kind of trot,” you say sweetly.
“Tt’s easier than the other kind.”

“Tt isn’t a trot; it’s acanter,” says your mas-
ter, with a suspicion of dryness in his voice,
“but you may make him trot if you like.
Shorten both reins, especially the left. Whoa,
Charlie! Wait until I say ‘Now,’ before you do
it! Shorten both reins, especially the left ;
that will keep him to the wall. Then extend
your left arma little, and draw back your right;
draw back your left and extend your right, and
repeat until he comes down to a trot. That
saws his mouth, and gives him something beside
scampering to occupy his mind. Now we will
start up again at a canter. Lengthen your
reins, but remember to shorten them when you
want to trot.”

“Shall I tell you beforehand, so that you may
have time to make your horse trot, too?” you
ask. .
Esmeralda, you must have been reading one
of those sweet books on etiquette which advise
the horsewoman to be considerate of her com-
panions. How much notice do you think your
master requires to “make his horse trot”?

54 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

You will blush over the memory of that ques-
tion next year, although now you feel that you
have been very ladylike, even very Christian, in
putting it, for have you not shown that your
temper is unruffled and that you are thinking
how to make others happy ?

Your master answers that his horse may be
trusted, and that if you prefer to take your own
time to change from the canter to the trot,
rather than to wait for him to say, “‘ Now,” you
may do so. And then the canter begins again,
and, after a round or two, you try the mouth-
sawing process, doing it very well, for it is an
ugly little trick at best, rarely found necessary
by an accomplished rider, and beginners seldom
fail to succeed in it at the very first attempt. If
it were pretty and graceful, it would be more
difficult. Down to the trot comes the obedient
Charles, and up you go one, two, three, four! and
down you come, until you really expect to find
yourself and the saddle in the tan between the
two halves of your horse.

Of what can the creature’s spinal column
be made, to bear such a succession of blows!
You begin by pitying the horse, but after

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 55

about half a circuit, you think that human
beings have their little troubles also, and you
feel a suspicion of sarcasm in your master’s
gentle: “You need not do French trot any
longer, unless you like. It will be easier for
you to rise.”

You give a frantic hop in your stirrup at the
wrong minute, and begin a series of jumpsin
which you and the horse rise on alternate beats,
by which means your saddle receives twice as
much pounding as at first, and then you have
breath enough left to gasp “Stop,” and in a
second you are walking along quietly, and your
master is saying in a matter-of-fact way: “ You
would better keep your left heel down all the
time, and turn the toe toward the horse’s side
and keep your right foot and leg close to the
saddle below the knee; swing yourself up and
down as a man does; don’t drop like a lump of
lead.”

“Like a snowflake,’ you murmur, for you
fancy that you have a pretty wit like Will
Honeycomb. |

“Not at all,” says your master. ‘ The snow-
flake comes down because it must,and comes to

56 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

stay. You come because you choose, and come
down to rise again instantly. You must keep
your right shoulder back, and your hands ona
level with your elbows, and you must turn the
corners, not let your horse turn them as he
pleases — but more pupils are coming now and
I must give you another horse. You may have
Billy Buttons.’”’ The change is effected, the
other pupils begin. their lessons, and you and
Billy walk deliberately about in the centre of
the ring.

At first he keeps moderately near the wall,
but after a time you find that the circle de-
scribed by his footsteps has grown smaller, and
that he apparently fancies himself walking around
a rather small tree. Your master rides up as
you are pulling and jerking your left rein in the
endeavor to come nearer to the wall, and says,
“Try Billy’s canter. I'll take a round with
you. Strike him on the shoulder, and when
you want him to trot, shorten your reins and
touch him on the flank. Those are the signals
which he minds best. Now! Canter.”

You remember of having heard of a “canter
like a rocking-chair.” Charlie had it, but you

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 57

were too inexperienced to know it, but bad
riders long ago deprived Billy of any likeness to
a rocking-chair. He knows that if he should
let himself go freely, you would come near to
making him rear by pulling on the reins, and so
he goes along “one, two, three, one, two, three,”
deliberately, and you feel and look, as you hear
an unsympathetic gazer in the gallery remark,
“like a pea in a hot skillet.” You prided your-
self on keeping your temper unruffled under
the wise criticism of your master, but in truth
you did not really believe him. You said to
yourself that he was too particular, and you
even thought of informing him that he must
not expect perfection immediately, but this
piece of impudence, spoken by a person who,
for aught that you can tell, does not know Billy
from a clotheshorse, convinces you instantly,
and you decide to canter no more, but to trot,
and so you “shorten your reins and strike him
on the flank.”

As you shorten the right rein more than the
left, and as your whip falls as lightly as if you
meant the blow for yourself, Billy goes to the
centre of the ring, but you jerk him to the wall,

58 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. |

and in time, trot he does. But your left foot
swings now forward and now outward, and you
cannot rise. The regular, pulsating count by
which a clever girl is moving like a machine,
irritates you, and you tell another beginner,
“They really ought to let us rise on the alter-
nate beats at first, until we are more accustomed
to the motion,” and she agrees with you, and
both of you try this, which might be called trot-
ting on the American pupil plan, but even the
calm Billy manages to take about six steps be-
tween what you regard as the “‘alternate beats,”
and at last breaks into a canter, and you hear your-
self ordered, very peremptorily, to ‘sit down.”
You obey, but begin the pea in the skillet per-
formance again, and at last you tell your master
that you will not try to trot any more, but
would like to know all about managing the
reins.

“And then,” you say, looking as wise as the
three Gothamites of the nursery song, ‘even if
I should not be able to trot long, and should
fall behind my friends on the road, I shall have
perfect control of my horse, and can walk on
until they miss me and turn back for me. Will

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 59

you please tell me all the ways of holding the
reins?”

Your master does not laugh; the joke is too
venerable, and he feels awe-struck as he hears
it, so ancient does it seem.

“Tf you take your reins in one hand,” he
says, “an easy way is to hold the snaffle on
your ring finger, and the left curb outside the
little finger, with the right curb between the
middle and fore fingers. Then, when you want
to use both hands, put your right little finger
and ring finger between the right curb and
right snaffle, and hold your hands at exactly even
distances from your body, and at exactly even
distances from your horse’s head, with the two
reins firmly nipped by the thumbs resting on
the top of the fore-fingers. This is athe way
recommended in the Encyclopzdia Britannica,
in Colonel Dodge’s ‘Patroclus and Penelope,’
and you will see it in many very good hunting
pictures.

“ Colonel Anderson in his ‘On Horseback,’
recommends dividing the curb reins by the
little finger of the left hand and the snaffle
reins by the middle finger, carrying the ends

60 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

up through the hand, and holding them by the
thumb. Mr. Mead, in his ‘Horsemanship for
Women,’ mentions this hold, but prefers taking
the curb on the ring finger, and the snaffle out-
side the little finger, and between the forefinger
and middle finger. This hold is used in the
British army, and it is convenient in school,
because if it be desirable to drop the curb in
order to ride with the snaffle only, you can do it
by dropping your ring finger, and, if your horse
be moderately quiet, can knot the curb rein and
let it lie on his neck. Besides, it makes the
snaffle a little tighter than the curb, and that is
held to be a good thing in England. An Eng-
lish soldier is prone to accuse American cavalry-
men of riding too much on the curb, and by the
way, I have heard English soldiers assert that
they were taught the second method, but it was
a riding master formerly in the Queen’s service
who told me that the third was preferred.

““M. de Bussigny, in his little ‘ Handbook for
Horsewomen,’ gives the preference to crossing
the reins, the curb coming outside the little
finger and between the ring and middle finger,
and the snaffle between the little and ring fin-

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 61

gers and the middle finger and forefinger. I
hold my own in that way when training a horse,
but it is better for you to use both hands on
the reins, and he would tell you so. You are
more likely to sit square; it gives you twice
the hold, and then, too, you know where your
right hand is, and are not waving it about in
the air, or devising queer ways of holding your
whip. Now your hour is over, and I will take
you off your horse. Wait until he is perfectly
still, and the groom has him by the head. Now
drop your reins; let me take off the foot straps;
take your foot out of the stirrup; turn in the
saddle ; put one hand on my shoulder and one
on my elbow, and slip down as lightly as you
can.”’

You glance at the clock, perceive that you
have been in the saddle almost an hour and a
half, and murmur an apology. ‘Don’t mind,”
is the encouraging answer. “As long as a
pupil does not complain and call us stingy when
we make her dismount, we do not say much.
But are you really going on the road, Monday,
Miss Esmeralda?” “Yes, I am,” you answer.
“Ah, well,” he says, a little regretfully, “don’t

62 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

forget, then. Hold on with your right knee
and sit down for the canter.”

What shall you do by way of exercise before
Monday? Practise all the old movements, a
little of each one at a time, and take two
lengths of ribbon as wide as an ordinary rein,
or, better still, two leather straps, and fasten
one to the knobs on the two sides of a door
and run the other through the keyhole. Call
the knob straps the snaffle reins, and the key-
hole straps the curb, and, sitting near enough
to let them lie in your lap, practise picking them
up and adjusting them with your eyes shut.
When you can do it quickly and neatly, try and
see with how little exertion you can sway the
door to left and right, and then practise holding
these dummy reins while standing on one foot
and executing the movement used in trotting.
If the door move by a hair’s breadth, it will
show you that you are pulling too much, and
you must remember that your hold on your
horse’s mouth gives you greater leverage than
you have on the door, and then, perhaps, you
will pity the poor beast a little now and then.

What is that? Your master treated you as

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 63

if you were an ignorant girl? So you are, dear,
and even if you were not, if you knew all that
there is in all the books, you might still be a
bad horsewoman, because you might not know
enough to use your knowledge. You don’t
care, and you feel very well, and are very glad
that you went? Of course, that is the invaria-
ble cry! And you mean to take some more
lessons if you find that you really need them?
Then leave your skirt in the dressing-room
locker! You will come back from your ride a
wiser, but not a sadder, girl, One cannot be
sad on horseback.

64 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

v.

— Pad, pad, pad! like a thing that was mad,
My chestnut broke away.
Thornbury.

SMERALDA was puzzled when she re-
turned from her first riding party.
In the morning, looking very pretty
in her borrowed riding habit, her
English hat with the hunting guard made ne-
cessary by the Back Bay breezes, her brown
gauntlets, and the one scarlet carnation in her
button-hole, she drove to the riding-school,
where she had agreed to meet Theodore and
her other friends, not like Mrs. Gilpin, lest all
should say that she was proud, but because her
master had promised to lend her one of the
school horses, to put her in the saddle and to
adjust her stirrup, and because she secretly felt
that she would better give herself every possi-
ble advantage in what, as it came nearer, assumed
the aspect of a trial rather than a pleasure.
Beholding Ronald, the promised horse, se-

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 65

verely correct in his road saddle, and looking
immensely tall as he stood on the stable floor,
she inly applauded her own wisdom, strongly
doubting that Theodore’s unpractised arm would
have tossed her into her place as lightly as the
master’s, and she was secretly overjoyed when
the master himself mounted and joined the
party with her, making its number nine; Es-
meralda herself, the graduate of three lessons ;
Theodore, all his life accustomed to ride any-
thing calling itself a horse, but making no pre-
tensions to mastery of the equestrian science ;
the lawyer, understood, on his own authority,
to be well informed in everything ; the society
young lady, erect, precise, self-satisfied; the
Texan, riding with apparent laziness, his hands
rather high and seldom quiet, but not to be
shaken from his seat ; the beauty, languid and
secretly discontented because her horse was “ in-
tended for a brunette, and a ridiculous mount
for a blonde” ; Versatilia, who had “‘ taken up
riding a little,” and the cavalryman, calm, quiet,
and fraternally regarded by the master, as he
reviewed the little flock from the back of a
horse which had been offered to him as the para-

66 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. —

gon of its species, and for which and its kind,
as he announced after riding a square or two,
he “ was not paying a cent a carload.”

“It is a lovely horse,” said the beauty. “It
is such a beautiful color. But men never care
for color.”

“Good color is a good thing, undoubtedly,”
said the master, “but a beautiful horse is a
good horse, not necessarily an animal which
would look well in a painted landscape, because
its color would harmonize with the hue of the
trees.”

“She is a beautiful girl, isn’t she,” said Es-
meralda, looking admiringly at the beauty, who,
having just remembered Tennyson’s line about
swaying the rein with flying finger tips, was ex-
ecuting some movements which made her horse
raise his ears to listen for the cause of such
conduct, and then shake his head in mild disap-
proval.

“What do I care for a pretty girl?” de-
manded the master. “ Pretty rider is what I
want to see, and ‘ pretty rider’ is ‘ good rider.’
Wait until that girl trots three minutes or so,
and see whether or not she is pretty.”

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 67

The party went through the streets at a rapid
walk, now and then meeting a horse-car, now
and then a stray wagon, but invariably allowed
to take its own way, with very little regard for
the rule of the road. The American who drives,
whatever may be his social station, admires the
courage of the woman who rides, but he is
firmly convinced that she does not understand
horses, and gives her all the space available
wherein to disport herself.

“ Are we right in placing the ladies on the
left ?”? asked Theodore, turning to the master.

“Of course,” cried the lawyer. ‘We follow
the English rule, and the left was the place of
safety for the lady in the days when English
equestrianism was born. Travelers took the
left of the road, and this placed the cavalier be-
tween his lady and any possible danger.”’

“And in the United States they take the
right, and she is between him and any possible
danger,” said the master. “It is the custom,
but it seems illogical and foolish. True, it re-
moves any danger that the lady may be crushed
between her own horse and her escort’s, but
who protects her from any passing car or car-

68 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

riage, and in case of a runaway what can her
escort, his left hand occupied with his own
reins, do to aid her with hers, or to disentangle
‘her foot from the stirrup or her habit from the
pommels in case she is thrown? Can he snatch
her from the saddle, after the manner of one of
Joaquin Miller’s young men? The truth is
that since the rule of the road is ‘keep to the
right,’ the rule of the saddle should be ‘sit on
the right,’ but with a lady on his bridle hand
the horseman could not be at his best as an es-
cort, even then.

“Tt is one of the many little absurdities in
American customs; the old story of the sur-
vival of the two buttons on the back of the
coat, and, by the way, Miss Esmeralda, the two
buttons on the back of your habit are out of
place, not because of your tailor’s fault, but
because of yours. They should make a line at
right angles with your horse’s spinal column.
Draw yourself back a little, until you can feel
the pommel under your right knee. ‘Draw’
yourself back; don’t lean, but keep yourself
perfectly erect, your back perpendicular to your
horse’s. Sit a little to the left ; lean a little to

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 69

the right. Let your left shoulder go forward a
little, your right shoulder backward. Now you
are exactly right. Try to remember your sen-
sations at this minute, in order to be able to
reproduce them. When I say ‘Careful,’ pass
yourself in review and endeavor to feel where
you are wrong. But,” addressing the cavalry-
man, who was in advance with Versatilia, “is
this procession a funeral ?”

“Not exactly,” said the cavalryman, and
then, after a backward glance, he cried, in the
fashion of a military riding-school master:
“ Pr-r-re-pare to tr-r-r-ot — Trot !”’

Esmeralda remembered to shorten her reins,
and resigned herself to the Fates, who were pro-
pitious, enabling her to catch the cadence of
the trot, and to rise to it during the few seconds
before the cavalryman slackened rein. ‘“ Care-
ful,’ said the master, and she shook herself into
place, eliciting a hearty “Good!” from him.
“Look at your pretty girl,” he growled softly,
but savagely, and truly the beauty solicited
attention. Slipping to the left in her saddle,
one elbow pointing toward Cambridgeport and
the other toward Dorchester, her right foot vis-

70 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

ible through her habit, and her left all but out
of the stirrup, she was attractive no longer, and
to complete the master’s disgust she ejaculated:
“My hair is coming down!”

“Better bring a nurse and a ladies’ maid for
her,” he muttered to Esmeralda, confidentially.
‘‘Hairpins in your saddle pocket? Well, you
are a sensible girl,’ and he rode forward with
the little packet, giving it to the lawyer to pass
to the unfortunate young woman. But here
arose a little difficulty. The space between the
lawyer's horse and the beauty’s as they stood
was too wide to allow him to lay the parcel in
her outstretched fingers. The Texan, on her
right hand, had enough to do to keep her horse
and his own absolutely motionless that she
might not be thrown by any unexpected motion
of either animal. Versatilia exclaimed in re-
monstrance, ‘“‘ Don’t leave me,’”’ when the caval-
ryman said, “ Wait asecond ; I’ll comeand give
them to her;’’ the master sat quiet and smiling.

“Why don’t you dismount and give them to
her?’ cried Theodore, and was out of his saddle,
had placed the parcel in her hand, and was back
in his place again before either of the other three
men could speak.

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. — 71

“Very well done,” said the master, approv-
ingly, “but not the right thing to do. Never
leave your saddle without good cause, and never
leave your horse looseforamoment. Yes, I saw
that you retained your hold of the reins; I was
talking at Miss Esmeralda.”

. “Why didn’t you make your horse step side-
wise ?”’ he asked the lawyer.

pecan i -die wont. See there!”

Sundry pulls, precisely like those which he
might have used had he intended the horse to
turn, a pair of absolutely motionless legs, and
an unused whip were accepted as evidence that
the lawyer’s “I can’t’”’ was perfectly true, and
the master and the cavalryman exchanged com-
prehending glances as the latter said: ‘Well,
don’t mind. An eminent authority announced
after the Boston horse show of 1889 that high-
school airs were of no use on the road. To
make a horse move a step sidewise is the veriest
little zephyr of an air, but it would have been
of some use to you, then. Are we ready now?
What’s that? Dropped your whip?”

Up went the Texan’s left heel, catching
cleverly on the saddle as he dropped lightly to

72 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

the right, after the fashion of the Arab, the
Moor, the Apache, of all the nations which ride
for speed and for fighting rather than for leap-
ing and hunting, and he caught the whip from
the ground and was back in his place in a
twinkling. The ladies were unmoved, because
inappreciative; the lawyer looked savagely en-
vious, the cavalryman and the master approving,
and Theodore, frankly admiring, but no one said
anything, the little cavalcade rearranged itself,
and once more moved on at a footpace until an
electric car appeared.

‘Ronald is likea rock,” said the master, “and
you need not be afraid, but I'll take this beast
along in advance. He will shy, or do some out-
rageous thing, and he has a mouth as sensitive
as the Mississippi’s, and no more.”

The “beast” did indeed sidle and fret and
prance, and manifest a disposition to hasten to
drown himself in the reservoir, beyond the reach
of self-propelling vehicles, and he repeated the
performance at the sight of two other cars,
although evidently less alarmed than at first,
but the fourth car was in charge of a kindly-
disposed driver, who came to a dead stop, out
of pure amiability.

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 73

This was too much for the ‘‘beast”’ to en-
dure; a moving house he was beginning to
regard as tolerable, but a house which stopped
short and glared at him with all its windows
was more than horse nature could endure, and
he started for the next county to institute an
inquiry as to whether such actions were to be
allowed, but found himself forced to stop, and
not altogether comfortable, while the master
cried good-naturedly : ‘‘ Go along and take care
of your car. I'll take care of my horse!”’

- “More than some other folks can do,’ said
the driver, with a quiet grin at the lawyer, whose
angry, “Here, what are you doing!”’ shouted to
his plunging steed, had brought all the women
in the car to the front, to explain to one another
that “that man was abusing his horse, poor
thing.”’

The car glided off, and Versatilia turned to
look at it; her horse stumbled slightly, jerking
her wrists sharply, and but for the cavalryman’s
quick shifting of the reins to his right hand and

his strong grasp of her reins with his left, she

might have been in danger.
‘‘ Never look back,’ lectured the master. .

0 ——

74 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. —

Esmeralda was his pupil, and he would have
taken the whole centennial quadrille and all the
cabinet ladies to point his moral, had he seen
them making equestrian blunders. ‘ Where
your horse has been, where he is, is the past.
Look to the future, straight before you.”

“The cavalryman looked back just now,”
Esmeralda ventured to say.

“Yes, but he turned his horse very slightly
to do it, and he may do almost anything, because
he has a perfect seat, and isa good horseman.”

“Suppose I hear something or somebody
coming up behind me?”

“Tf it have any intelligence, it will not hurt
you. If it have none, looking will do you no
good. Turn out to the right as far as you
can and look to the front harder than ever, so
as to be ready to guide your horse and to
avoid any obstacles in case he should start
to run. What is the trouble with the ladies,
now?” :

“O, dear!”’ cried the beauty to the society
young lady, “ your horse.”

“What’s the matter with him?” asked the
other, still very stately and not turning.

~1
On

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

“Oh! the dreadful creature has caught his
tail on my horse’s bit,” said the beauty.

“Then you'd better take your horse’s bit
away,” retorted the other. ‘My horse’s eyes
are not at that end of him, and he can’t be
expected to look at his tail.”

« And you may be kicked,” added the Texan.
“Check him a little; there! We ought not to
be so close together, and we ought to be moving
a little, I think. Shall we trot again?”

Everybody assented, the cavalryman and Ver-
satilia set off, the others followed as best they
might, the beauty “ going to pieces”’ ina minute
or two, according to the master,the society young
lady stiffening visibly, losing the cadence of the
trot very soon, but making no outcry as she was
tossed about uncomfortably, and not bending
her head to look at her reins, as Versatilia did.
“There’s the advantage of training in other
things,’ saidthe master. ‘She’sa good dancer
and a good amateur actress, and she is control-
ling herself as she would on a ballroom floor,
and remembering the spectators as she would
on the stage. She’s no rider, but is perfectly
selfish and self-possessed, and she will cheat her

76 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. -

escort into thinking that she is one. Glad she’s
no pupil of mine, however! She always leads
the conversation, one of her friends told me the
otherday. That is to say, she is alwaysacting. I
can’t teach such a person anything; nobody can.
She can teach herself, as she can think of her-
self and love herself, but she can't go outside of
herself —and the lawyer will find it out after he
has married her.”

Esmeralda and Theodore stared in astonish-
ment.

“Walk,” said the master, noticing that his
pupil looked too warm for comfort, and the
three allowed the others to go on without them.
“ Careful,’ he added, and Esmeralda, adjusting
herself studiously, asked: “Is it really easier
to ride on the road than it is in the school? It
seems so.”

“Tt is a little, especially if the corners of the
ring are so near together that the horse goes in
a circle, for then the rider has to lean to the
right, while on the road she may sit straight.
Give me the right kind of a horse for my pupil
to ride, and I would as lief give lessons on the
road as anywhere, but it is not so well for the

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 77

pupil, whose attention is distracted bya thousand
things, and who learns less in a year than she
would in a month in school. There is no finish
about the riding of a woman so taught. She
may be pretty, as you said of one of your friends,
she may be self-possessed, like the other, but
she will betray her ignorance every moment.
You were surprised just now at what I said of
the society young lady. A woman can’t cheat
an old riding-master, after he has seen her in
the saddle. He knows her and her little ways
by heart. Shall we start up? Ah!”

Ronald, the “steady as a rock,” was off and
away at a canter; Theodore was starting to
gallop in pursuit, but was sharply ordered back
by the master, who went on himself at a rather
slow canter, ready to break into a gallop if his
pupil were thrown, but keeping out of Ronald’s
hearing, lest he should be further startled by
finding himself followed. There was a clear
stretch of road before her, and Esmeralda sat
down as firmly as possible, brought her left knee
up against the pommel, clung firmly with her
right knee, held her hands low and her thumbs
as firm as possible, and thought very hard.

78 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

““Very soon,” she said to herself, “I shall be
thrown and dragged, and what a figure I shall
be going home, if I’m not killed! But I sha’n’t
be! I shall be ridiculous, and that’s worse.”
Here she swept by the riding party, but as Ver-
satilia and the beauty turned to look at her, and
forgot to control their horses, the cavalryman
and the Texan had to do it for them, and could do
nothing for Esmeralda except to shout ‘‘ Whoa,”
which Ronald very properly disregarded. The
master came up, and the society young lady
addressed him with, ‘‘ Very silly of her to try to
exhibit herself so, isn’t it?”

“That’s no exhibition; that’s a runaway,”
said the master grimly. ‘She’s doing well too,
poor girl,” and he and Theodore went on after
the flying rider.

Two or three carriages, the riders staring with
horror ; a pedestrian or two, innocently wonder-
ing why a lady should be on the road alone; a
small boy whistling shrilly ; these were all the
spectators of Esmeralda’s flight. She felt deso-
late and deserted, and yet sure that it was best
that she should be alone, since the master could
overtake her if he would, and she wondered if

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 79

she should be very seriously injured when thrown .

at last, but all the time she was talking to Ronald
in a voice carefully kept at a low pitch, and her
hands were held with a steadiness utterly new
to them, and the good horse went on regularly,
but faster and faster.

“That isn’t a real runaway,” said the master
to himself. ‘Ah, I see! her whip is down and
strikes him at every stride, and so she uncon-
sciously urges him forward. If there were a
side road here, I’d gallop around and meet her,
or if there were fields on either side, I’d leap
the fence and make a circuit and cut her off,
but through this place, with banks like a rail-
way cutting on each side, there is nothing to
do.”

Swifter and swifter! Esmeralda began to feel
weaker, thought of Theodore, and of some other
things of which she never told even him, said a
little prayer, but all the time remembered her
master’s injunctions, and kept her place firmly,
waiting for the final, and, as she believed, inevi-
table crash, when lo! she saw that just in front
of her lay a long piece of half-mended road, full
of ugly little stones, and she turned Ronald on

80 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

it, with a triumphant, “See how you like that,
sir,’ and then sawed his mouth. Inhalfa minute
he was walking. In another the master was
beside her with words of approval. Theodore
galloped up, pale and anxious, and between
the two she had quite as much praise as was good
for her, and, being told of the position of the
whip, found her confidence in Ronald restored.

“But you should never start up hastily,” said
the master. ‘Take time for everything, and
check your horse the instant he goes faster
than you mean to have him. You area good
girl, and you shall not be scolded, or snubbed,
either,” he muttered, as the party came up, the
cavalryman and the Texan loud in praise, the
other four clamorous with questions and advice.

“You look quite dishevelled,” said the society
young lady agreeably.

“Ladies often do after they have been on the
road a little while. Excuse me, but one of your
skirt buttons is unfastened,”’ said the master,
and, not knowing how to pass her reins into her
right hand so as to use her left to repair the
accident, the society young lady was effectually
silenced, while the master, holding Esmeralda’s

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL, 81

horse, made her wipe her face, arrange the curly
locks flying about her ears, readjust her hat, and
generally smooth her plumage, until she was once
more comfortable.

After a little, the master proposed a trot up
the hill, and instructed Esmeralda to lean for-
. ward as her horse climbed upward, “If you
should have to trot down hill, lean back a little,
and keep your reins short,” he said.

The lawyer and the society young lady, essay-
ing to descend the next hill brilliantly, barely
escaped going over their horses’ heads, and all
four ladies were glad when they perceived that
they were going homeward.

“JT like it,’ Esmeralda said to the master,
“but I wish I knew more, and I’m going to
learn, and I see now that three lessons isn’t
enough, even for a beginning.” |

“T know a girl who took seventeen lessons
and then was thrown,” said the society young
lady. ‘Native ability is better than teaching.
I don’t believe any master could make a rider
of you, Esmeralda.”’

“A good teacher can makea rider of any one’
who will study,” said the master, to whom she

82 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

looked forapproval. ‘As for seventeen lessons,
they are better than seven, of course, but they
are not much, after all. How many dancing
lessons, music lessons, elocution lessons have
you taken? More than seventeen? I thought
so. Here’s a railroad bridge, but no train com-
ing. Had one been approaching, and had there
been no chance to cross before it came, I should
have made you turn Ronald the other way, Miss
Esmeralda, so that if he ran he would run out
of what he thinks is danger, and not into it.
And now for an easy little trot home.”

An easy little trot it was, and Esmeralda, left
at her own door, where a groom waited to take
her horse to the stable, was happy, but puzzled.
“Theodore,” she cried, as soon as he appeared
in the evening, “did you ask the master to go —
with us? He treated me just as he does in
school.”

“Yes, I did,” said Theodore boldly. “I was
afraid to take charge of you alone. That was
a ‘road lesson.’”’

“ You — you — exasperating thing!” cried
Esmeralda. ‘But then, you were sensible.”

“ That’s tautology,” said Theodore.

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 83

VI.

A solitary horseman might have been seen.
G. P. R. James.

#2\ND so you are feeling very meek after
” a? ,| your road lesson and your runaway,
ean ee and are a perfect Uriah
Heep for ’umbleness, and are, hence-
forth and forever, going to believe every sylla-
ble that your master utters, and to obey every
command the instant that it is given, and —
there, that will do! And you are going to take
one private lesson so as to learna few little
things before you display your progress before
any other pupils again? One private lesson!
Did your master advise it? N-no, but he con-
sented to give it, when you had persuaded him
that it would be best for you? When you had
persuaded him? Behold the American pupil’s
definition of obedience: to follow commands
dictated by herself! However, there is no use
in trying to eradicate the ideas bequeathed and

84 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

fostered by a hundred years of national self-
government, so go to the school at the hour
appointed by your master, an hour when no
other pupils are expected.

The horses pace very solemnly around the
great ring, and you adjust yourself with won-
derful dignity, feeling that your master must
perceive by your improved carriage and by the
general perfection of your aspect that your ex-
quisite timidity and charming shyness have
been responsible for your awkwardness in
former lessons, when other pupils were pres-
ent, but now he leaves your side and takes a
position in the centre of the ring, whence he
addresses you thus:

‘Keep your reins even! The right ones are
too short, the left too long! Stop him! That
is not stopping him! He took two steps for-
ward after he checked himself. Go forward,
and try again when [ tell you. Stop! Not so
hard, not so hard! You are making him back!
Extend your arms forward! There! A little
more, and you would have made him rear!
Whoa! Wo-ho! Now listen! Not so! Don’t
drop your reins in that way, and sit so care-

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 85

lessly that a start would throw you from your
place!. Never leave your horse to himself a
second! Sit as well as you can, look between
your horse’s ears and listen! Always use some
discretion in choosing your place to stop. Do
not try to stop when turning a corner, even to
avoid a danger, but rather change your direc-
tion. In the ring, never stop on the track, un-
less in obedience to your master’s order, but
turn out into the centre, but when you have
once told your horse to stop, make him do it,
for his sake, as well as for your own, if you have
to spend an hour in the effort. And it will be
an hour well spent, so that you need not lose
patience, and if you do lose it, do not allow
your horse to perceive it.

“To stop, you should press your leg and your

whip against your horse’s sides; lift your hands .

a very little, and turn them in toward your body,
lean back and draw yourself up. There are six
things to do: two to your horse, one on each
side of him, two with your hands and two with
your body, and you must do them almost simul-
taneously. Unless you do the first two, your
horse will surely take a forward step or two

86 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

after stopping, in order to bring himself into a
comfortable position. If you do not cease do-
ing the last four the moment that your horse
has stopped, he may rear or he may back sev-
eral steps, and he should never do that, but
should await an order for each step. Now, do
you remember the six things? Very well! Go
forward! Stop! Did I tell youto do anything
with your arms? No? Well, why did you
bring your elbows back of your waist, then?
It is allowable to do that —to save your life,
but not to stop your horse. Bend your hands
at the wrist, turning the knuckles, if need be,
until they are at right angles with their ordinary
position, so that the back of your hand is toward
your horse’s ears, but keep the thumb upper-
most all the time.

“ Now, think it overa moment! Go forward!
Stop! Pretty well! Go on! Don’t lean for-
ward too much when you start, and sit up again
instantly.

“Now walk around the school once, and go
into all the corners. Stop! You stopped pretty
well, but you leaned back too far, and you did
not draw yourself up at all. Mind, you draw

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 87

‘yourself’ up ; you don’t try to pull the bit up
through the corners of your horse’s mouth.
What I wanted to say was that a turn is just
half a stop as far as your hands, leg and whip
are concerned. To turn to the right, use your
right hand and whip, but keep your left leg and
hand steady ; to turn to the left, use your left
leg and hand and keep your whip and whip
hand steady. When you turn to the right,
lean to the right instead of backward ; ‘lean,’
not twist to the right, and turn your head to the
right so as to see what may be there.

“Tf you were on the road, and did not turn
your head before going down a side street, you
might knock over a bicycle rider, and thereby
hurt your horse, which would be a pity,” he
says, with apparent indifference as to the bicy-
cle rider’s possible injuries. ‘ Now go around
the school again. Left shoulder forward!
Right shoulder back! Sit to the right! Lean
to the left! I told you to sit to the left, the
other day? And that is the reason that I have
to tell you to sit to the right to-day. You over-
do it. Miss Esmeralda, if I were talking for my
own pleasure, I should say pretty things to you,

88 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

but I am talking to teach you, and when I say
‘This is wrong! This is wrong!’ and again
‘This is wrong!’ I do it for you, not for my-
self. When your father and mother say ‘ This
is wrong; you must not do it, or you will be
sorry, you do not look at them as if you
thought them unreasonable —or, I trust that
you do not,’ he adds, mentally. ‘ Heaven
only knows what an American girl may do
when anybody says, ‘ You must not’ to her.
“Now,” he goes on aloud, “it is the same
with your teacher; he says ‘You are wrong,’
lest you should be sorry by and by, and he is
patient and says it many times, as your father
and mother do, and he says it every time that
you do anything wrong, unless you do so many
wrong things at once that he cannot speak of
each one. Now you shall turn to the right,
and remember that a turn is half a stop. Go
across the school and then turn to the left!
Keep a firm hold on your right rein now so as
to keep your horse close to the wall. Where,
where are your toes? It was not necessary to
make you turn so as to see your right foot
through your riding habit as I can now, to

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. -89

know that they were pointing outward. Your
right shoulder told the story by drooping for-
ward. M. de Bussigny lays especial stress on
this point in his manual, and you will find that
your whole position depends more on that seem-
ingly unimportant right foot than on many
other things, so bend your will to holding it
properly, close against the saddle. Walk on
now, keeping on a straight line. If you cannot
do it in the school, you cannot on the road, and
many an ugly scrape against walls, horse-cars
and other horses you will receive unless you
can keep to the right and in a straight line.
Now turn to the left, and go straight across
the school. Straight! Fix your eye on some-
thing when you start, and ride at it with as
much determination as if it were a fence; now
turn to the right again and go forward. Have
you read Delsarte ?”’

No, you murmur to yourself, you have not
read Delsarte, and, if you had, you do not believe
that you could remember it or anything else
just at present. What an endless string of
directions ! You wish that there was another
pupil with you to take the burden of: a few of

90 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

them! You wish you were —oh! anywhere.
This is your obedience, is it, Esmeralda? Well,
you don’t care! This is dull! Your horse
thinks so, too. He gently tries the reins, and,
finding that you offer no resistance, he decides
to take a little exercise, and starts off at a canter,
keeping away from the wall most piously, avoid-
ing the corners as if some Hector might be in
ambuscade there to catch and tame him, and
rushing on faster and faster, as you do nothing
in particular to stop him.

“Lean to the right,” cries the master, and
you obey, but the horse continues his canter,
almost a gallop now, when suddenly your wits
return to you, you draw back first the right
hand and then the left, he begins to trot, and
by some miracle you begin to rise, and continue
to do it, you do not know exactly how, feeling
a delight in it, an exhilarating, exultant sensa-
tion as if flying. “Keep your right leg close
to the saddle below the knee and turn your toes
in!’? ‘You obey, and eyen remember to press
your left knee to the saddle also and to keep
your heel down. ‘Don’t rise to the left! Rise
straight! Your horse is circling to the right,

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 91

and you must lean to the right to rise straight !
Take him into the corners so that he will move
on a straight line, and you can rise straight and
be as much at ease as if on the road. Whoa!
Now, don’t change your position, but look at
yourself! You did not shorten your reins when
you began to trot, and, if your horse had stum-
bled, you could not have aided him to regain
his balance. Had you shortened them properly,
you could, by sitting down, using your leg and
whip lightly and turning your hands toward your
body, have brought him down to a walk without
hurling yourself forward against the pommel in
that fashion. Now, adjust yourself and your
reins, and start forward once more,” and you
obey, and are beginning to flatter yourself that
your master does not know that your canter was

accidental, when he warns you against allowing

a horse to do anything unbidden.

“You should have stopped him at once,’ he
says. “He will very likely try to repeat his
little manoeuvre in a few minutes. When he
does, check him instantly, not by your voice,
but as you have been directed. And now, have
you read Delsarte? No? If you have time,

92 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

you might read a chapter or two with advan-
tage, simply for the sake of learning that a
principle underlies all attitudes.

““He divides the body into three parts; the
head, torso, and legs, and he teaches that the
first and third should act on the same line,
while the second is in opposition to them. For
instance, if you be standing and looking toward
the right, your weight should rest on your right
leg and your torso should be turned to the left.
Neither turn should be exaggerated, but the two
should be exactly proportioned, one to another.

“Now for riding, your body is divided into
three parts, your head and torso making one, your
legs above the knee, the second, and your legs
below the knee, the third, and you will find that
the first and third will act together, whether you
desire it or not. Your right foot is properly
placed now, but turn its toes outward and up-
ward; you see what becomes of your right
shoulder. Now try to make a circle to the
right, a volte we call it, because it is best to
become accustomed to a few French words, as
there are really no English equivalents for many
of the terms used in the art of equestrianism.

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 93

“To make a yolte you have only to turn to
the right and to keep turning, going steadily
away from the wall until opposite your starting
point, and then regaining it by a half-circle.
Making voltes is not only a useful exercise,
showing your horse that you really mean to
guide him, and teaching you to execute a move-
ment steadily, but it affords an excellent way
of diverting the horse’s attention from the mis-
chief which Satan is always ready to find for
idle hoofs. Give him a few voltes and he for-
gets his plans for setting off at a canter. Do
you understand? Very well. When you are
half-way down the school try to make a volte.
I will give you no order. Your horse would
understand if I did, and would begin the move-
ment himself, and you should do it unaided.”

You try the volte, and convince yourself that
the geometry master who taught you that a

circle was a polygon with an infinite number

of sides was more exact and less poetical than
you thought him in the days before the riding-
school began to reform your judgment on many
things. You are conscious of not making a
respectable curve in return, and you draw a

94 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

deep breath of disgust as you say, ‘‘ That was
very bad, wasn’t it?”

“ Not for the first time. Keep your left hand
and leg steady, and try it again on the other
side of the ring. Better! Now walk around,
and make him go into the corners, if you have
to double your left wrist in doing it, but don’t
move your arm, and when you begin to bend
your right wrist to turn, straighten your left,
and remember to lean your body and turn your
head, if you want your horse to turn his body.
Your wrist acts on his head and keeps him in
line; your whip and leg bring his hind legs
under him, but you must move your body if
you want him to move his.

“Now, you shall make a half volte, or shall
‘change hands,’ as it is sometimes called,
because, if you start with your left hand near-
est the wall, you will come back to the wall
with your right hand nearest to it; or, to speak
properly, ‘if you start on the right hand of the
school, you will end on the left hand.’ For
the half volte, make a half circle to the right,
and then ride ina diagonal line to a point some
distance back on your track, and when you are

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 65

close to it make three quarters of a turn to the
left and you will find yourself on the left of the

school, and in a position to practise keeping

your horse to the right. Try it, beginning
about two thirds of the way down the long side
of the school. Now to get back to the right
hand, you may turn to the left across the school,
and turn to the left again.

“There is a better way of doing it, but that
is enough for to-day. Walk now. Do you see
how much better your horse carries himself, and
how much better you carry your hands, after

thuse little exercises ? Now you must try and

imagine yourself doing them over and over
again, to accustom your mind to them, just as
when learning to play scales and five-finger ex-
_ ercises you used to think them out while walk-
ing. Shall you not need pictures and diagrams
to assist you? Not if you have as much imagi-
‘nation as any horsewoman should have. Not
if you have enough imagination to manage a
cow, much more to enter into the feelings of
a good horse. Pictures are invaluable to the
stupid ; they benumb and enervate the clever,
and transform them into apish imitators, instead

96 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

of making them able to act from their own
knowledge and volition. Theory will not make
you a good rider, but a really good rider with-
out theory is an impossibility, and your theory
must have a deeper seat than your retinz.
Now, you shall have a very little trot, and then
you may walk for ten minutes, and try to do
voltes and half voltes by yourself, asking me
for aid if you cannot remember how to execute
the movements. Doing them will help you to
pass away the time when you are too tired to
trot, and will keep you from having any dull
moments.”

And you, Esmeralda, you naughty girl! You
forget all about your sulkiness half an hour ago,
and, looking your master in the face, you say:
“But nobody ever has dull moments in riding-
school.” There! Finish your lesson and walk
off to the dressing-room ; you will be trying to
trade horses with somebody the next thing, you
artful, flattering puss!

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 97

VII.

Here we are riding, she and I !

Browning.

HAT is it now, Esmeralda? By your
blushing and stammering it is fairly
evident that another of your devices
for learning on the American plan —

that is to say, by not studying — is in full pos-

session of your fancy, and that again you ex-
pect to become a horsewoman by miracle;
come, what is it? A musicride? Nell has an
acauaintance who always rides to music, and
asserts that it is as easy as dancing; that the
music “fairly lifts you out of the saddle,” and
that the pleasure of equestrian exercise is
doubled when it is done to the sound of the
flute, violin and bassoon, or whatever may be
the riding-school substitutes ?

As for lifting you out of the saddle, Esmer-
alda, it is quite possible that music might exe-
cute that feat, promptly and neatly, once, and

98 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

might leave you out, were it produced suddenly
and unexpectedly by “ dot leetle Sherman band,”
and it is undoubtedly true that, were you a rider,
music would exhilarate you, quicken your mo-
tions, stimulate your nerves, and assist you as
it assists a soldier when marching. It is also
true that it will aid even you somewhat, by in-
dicating on what step you should rise, so that
your motions will not alternate with those of
your horse, to your discomfiture and his disgust,
and that thus, by mechanically executing the
movement, you may acquire the power of see-
ing that you are not performing it when you
rise once a minute or thereabouts, but a music
ride is an exercise which a wise pupil will not
take until advised thereto by her master. Still,
have your own way! Why did George Wash-
ington and the other fathers of the republic
exist, if its daughters must be in bondage to
common sense and expediency ?

Borrow Nell’s habit once more, for the criti-
cism to be undergone on the road is mild com-
pared to that of a gallery of spectators before
whom you must repeatedly pass in review, and
who may select you as the object of their

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 99

especial scrutiny. Dress at home, if possible ;
if not, go to the school early, and array yourself
rapidly, but carefully, for there may be fifty
riders present during the evening, and there
will be little room to spare on the mounting-
stand, and no minutes to waste on buttoning
gloves, shortening skirt straps or tightening
boot lacings. Remember all that you have been
taught about mounting and about taking your
reins, and think assiduously of it, with a deter-
mination to pay no attention to the gallery.

There will be no spectators on the mounting-
stand, and Theodore, who will take charge of
you in the ring, will mount before you do, and
when you have been put in your saddle by one
of the masters, and start, he will take his place
on your right, nearer the centre of the ring.
While you are walking your horses slowly about,
turning corners carefully and never ceasing to
control your reins, warn him that when you say,
“Centre,” he must turn out to the right in-
stantly, that you also may doso. If possible,
you will not pronounce the word, but will ride
as long as the horses canter or trot in time to
the music.

100 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

“Do you understand,” Theodore asks, “that
these horses adjust their gait to the music?”’

“So Nell’s friend says.”

“Well, I don’t believe it. They are good
horses, but I don’t believe that they practise
circus tricks. Why must I go to the centre the
minute that you bid me? Why couldn’t you
pull up and pass out behind me?”

‘“‘ Because if I did, somebody might ride over
me. It is not proper to stop while on the
track.”

“Oh-h! How long do they trot or canter at
atime? Half an hour?”

“Only a few minutes,” you answer, wonder-
ing whether Theodore really supposes that you
could canter, much less trot half an hour, even
if stimulated by the music of the spheres.

‘““That’s a pretty rider,” he says, as a girl cir-
cles lightly past, sitting fairly well, and rising
straight, but with her arms so much extended
that her elbow is the apex of a very obtuse an-
gle, although her forearms are horizontal. You
explain this point to Theodore, who replies that
she looks pretty, and seems to be able to trot
for some time, whereupon your heart sinks

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 101

within you. What will he say when he sees
the necessary brevity of your performance ?

rer’ riders enter; two: or three men
mounted on their own horses, beautiful creatures
concerning whose value fabulous tales are told
in the stable; the best rider of the school, very
quietly and correctly dressed, and managing her
horse so easily that the women in the gallery
do not perceive that she is guiding him at all,
although the real judges, old soldiers, a stray
racing man or two, the other school pupils and
the master —regard her admiringly, and the
grooms, as they bring in new horses, keep an
eye on her and her movements, as they linger
on their way back to the stable.

“‘Her horse is very good,” Theodore admits,
“but I don’t think much of her. Well, yes,
that is pretty,” he admits, as she executes the
Spanish trot for a few steps and then pats her
horse’s shoulder; “it’s pretty, but anybody
could do it on a trained horse, couldn’t they,
sir?”’ he asks your master, who rides up,
mounted on his own pet horse.

“« Anybody who knew how. The horse has
been trained to answer certain orders, but the

102 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOE.

orders: must be given. An untrained horse
would not understand the orders, no matter how
good an animal he might be. Antinous might
not have been able to ride Bucephalus, and I
don’t believe that Alexander could have coaxed
Rosinante into a Spanish trot. It isn’t enough
to have a Corliss engine, or enough to havea
good engineer: you must have them both, and
they must be acquainted with one another. I
don’t believe that horse would do that for you.”’

“No, I don’t think he would,” Theodore says
dryly, for he has been watching, and has reluc-
tantly owned to himself that he does not see
how the movement is effected. Meantime, you,
Esmeralda, have been arduously devoting your-
self to maintaining a correct attitude, and are
rewarded by hearing somebody in the gallery
wonder whether you represent the kitchen
poker or Bunker Hill Monument.

‘Don’t mind,” your master says, encourag-
ingly. ‘‘It is better to be stiffly erect than to be
crooked, and as for the person who spoke, she
could not ride a Newfoundland dog,” and with
that he touches his hat, and rides lightly across
the ring to speak to a lady whose horse has, in

,
:

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 103

the opinion of the gallery, been showing a very
bad temper, although in reality every plunge
and curvet has been made in answer to her
wrist and to the tiny spur which his rider wears
and uses when needed. The lady nods in an-
swer to something which the master says, the
two draw near to the wall, side by side, the
others fall in behind them, and the band begins
a waltz, playing rather deliberately at first, but
soon slightly accelerating the time.

There is very little actual need of guiding
your horse, Esmeralda, because long habit has
taught him what to do at a music-ride, but you
do right to continue to endeavor to make him
obey you. Should he stumble; should that
man riding before you and struggling to make
his horse change his leading foot fail in the at-
tempt, and cause the poor creature to fall;
should the rider behind you lose control of her
horse, your firm hold of the reins would be of
priceless value to you, but now the waltz rhythm
suddenly changes to that of a march, and your
horse begins to trot, slowly and with little action
at first, and then with a freer, longer stride which
really lifts you out of the saddle, sending you

104 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

rather too high for grace, indeed, but making the
effort very slight for you, and enabling you
to think about your elbows, and sitting to the
right and keeping your right shoulder back and
your right foot close to the saddle and pointing
downward, and your left knee also close, and
“about seventy-five other things,” as you sum
up the case to yourself. Thanks to this, you are
enabled to continue until the music stops, and
Theodore says, approvingly, “ Well, you can ride
a little.”’

‘“‘ A very little,” your master says. ‘She has
learned something, of course, but it would be
the unkindest of flattery for me to tell her that
she does well.”

‘‘One must begin to ride in early childhood,”
Theodore says.

“One should begin to be taught in. child-
hood,” the master amends, “but it is not abso-
lutely necessary. Some of the best riders in
the French Army never mounted until they
went to the military school, and some of the
best riders at West Point only know a horse by
sight until they fall into the clutches of the
masters there, and then!” His countenance
expresses deep commiseration.

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 105

“ Now,” he adds, “if you take my advice,
you two, you will take places in the centre
of the ring; you will sit as well as you
know how, Miss Esmeralda, and you will
watch the others through the next music.
It is perfectly allowable,” he adds, draw-
ing rein a moment as he passes, “to sit a
little carelessly when your horse is at rest,
always keeping firm hold of the reins, but I
would rather that you did not do it until you
have ridden a little more and are firmer in your
seat. Hollow your waist the least in the world,
for the sake of our poker-critic in the gallery,
and watch for bad riding as well as for good,” and
away he goes, and again the double circle of
riders sweeps around the ring, and you have
time to see that the horses seem to enjoy the
motion, and that their action is more easy and
graceful than it is when they are obeying the
commands of poor riders.

Theodore indulges in a little sarcasm at the
expense of a man whose elbows are on a level
with his shoulders, while his two hands are with-
in about three inches of one another on the
reins, and his horse has as full possession of

106 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

his head as of his body and legs, which is say-
ing much, for his rider’s toes are pointing
earthward and his heels apparently trying to
find a way to one another through the body of
his steed. Another man, riding at an amble
into which he has forced his fat horse by using
a Mexican bit, and keeping his wrists in con-
stant motion; and another, who leans backward
until his nose is on a level with the visor of his
cap, also attract his attention, but he persists in
his opinion that the best riders among the
ladies are those who can trot and canter the
longest, until your master, coming up, says in
answer to your protest against such heresy,
“No. Ease and a good seat are indeed
essential, but they are not everything. They
insure comfort and confidence, but not always
safety. It is well to be able to leap a fence
without being thrown. It is better to know
how to stop and open a gate and shut it after
you, lest some day you should have ahorse which
cannot leap, or a sprained wrist which may
make the leap imprudent for yourself. You
can acquire the seat almost insensibly while
learning the management, but you must study

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 107

in order to learn the management. However,
you came mainly for enjoyment to-night, I think.
Go and ride some more.”’

And you obey, and you have the enjoyment.
and when you go to the dressing-room, it is with
a feeling of perfect indifference to the gallery
critics, and when you come down, ready for the
street, you have a little gossip with the master.

This is the only kind of music ride, he tells
you, practicable for riders of widely varying abil-
ity, but the ordinary circus is but a poor display of
horsemanship compared to what may be seen in
some private evening classes in this country, or
in military schools. There are groups of riders in
Boston and in New York, friends who have long
practised together, who can dance the lancers
and Virginia reels as easily on horseback as on
foot, and who can ride at the ring as well as
Lord Lindesay himself, or as well as the pretty
English girls who amuse themselves with the
sport in India.

“Just think,” you sigh, “to be able to make
your horse go forward and back, and to move in
a circle, a little bit of a circle, and to do it all
exactly intime! Oh!”

108 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOEL.

And then, seeing Theodore perfectly un-
moved, your master tells of the military music
rides when, rank after rank, the soldiers dash
across the wide spaces of the school and stop
at a word, or by a preconcerted, silent signal,
every horse’s head in line, every left hand down,
sabre or lance exactly poised, every foot motion-
less, horse and rider still as if wrought from
bronze. And then he tells of the labyrinthine
evolutions when the long line moving over the
school floor coils and uncoils itself more swiftly
than any serpent, each horse moving at speed,
each one obeying as implicitly as any creature
of brass and iron moved by steam. And then he
talks of broadsword fights, in which the left
hand, managing the horse, outdoes the cunning
of the right, and of the great reviews, when, if
ever, a monarch must feel his power as he
sees the squadrons dash past him, saluting as
one man, and reflects on the expenditure of
mental and physical power represented in that
one moment’s display.

“You can’t learn to do such things as these,”
he says, “by mere rough riding. Why, only
the other day, when Queen Victoria went to

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 109

Sandringham, the gentlemen of the Norfolk
County hunt turned out to escort her carriage,
all in pink, all wearing the green velvet caps of
the hunt, all splendidly mounted and perfectly
appointed. They were a magnificent sight,
and it was no wonder that Her Majesty looked
at them with approval.

“In a dash across country they would prob-
ably have surpassed any other riders in the
world, unless, perhaps, those of some other
English county, but when Her Majesty and the
Prince of Wales appeared at a front window,
and the gentlemen rode past to salute them,
what happened? The first three or four ranks
went on well enough, although Frenchmen, or
Spaniards, or Germans would have done better,
because they, had they chosen, would have
saluted and then reined backward, but the Eng-
lishmen made a gallant show, and Her Majesty
smiled. Somebody raised a cheer, and the
horses began to rear and to perform movements
not named in the school manuals. The Queen
laughed outright, and the gentlemen finished
their pretty parade in some confusion. Now
a very little school training would have pre-

110 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

vented that accident, and the huntsmen would
have been as undisturbed as Queen Christina
was that day when her horse began to plunge
while in a procession, and she quickly brought
him to his senses, and won the heart of every
Spaniard who saw her by showing that ‘the
Austrian’ could ride. An English hunting-
man’s seat is so good that he is often careless
about fine details, but a trained horseman is
careless about nothing, and a trained horse-
woman is like unto him.”

And now the lights are out, and you and
Theodore go away, and, walking home, lay
plans for further work in the saddle, for he, too,
has caught the riding-fever, and now you begin
to think about class lessons.

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 111

VIII.

All in a wow.
Sothern.

you really fancy, Esmeralda, that
you are ready for class lessons?
You have been in the saddle only
six times, remember. But you have
been assured, on the highest authority, that ©
fifty lessons in class are worth a hundred pri-
vate lessons? And the same authority says
that the class lessons should be preceded by at
least twice as much private instruction as you
have enjoyed ; but, naturally, you suppress this
unfavorable context. You think that you can-
not begin to subject yourself to military disci-
pline too soon?

After that highly edifying statement of your
feelings, Esmeralda, hasten away to school be-
fore the dew evaporates from your dawning
humility, and make arrangements for entering
a class of beginners. You are fortunate in ar-
riving half way between two “hours,” and find

112 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

to your delight that you may begin to ride with
five or six other pupils on the next stroke of
the clock, and you hasten to array yourself, and
come forth just in time to see another class, a
long line of pretty girls, making its closing
rounds, the leader sitting with exquisitely bal-
anced poise, which seems perfectly careless, but
is the result of years of training and practice ;
others following her with somewhat less grace,
but still accomplishing what even your slightly
taught vision perceives to be feats of manage-
ment far beyond you; still others, one blushing
little girl with her hat slung on her arm, the
heavy coils of her hair falling below her waist ;
and an assistant master riding with the last
pupil, who is less skillful than the others, while
another master rides up and down the line or
stands still in the centre of the ring, criticising,
exhorting, praising, using sarcasm, entreaty and
sharp command, until the zeal and energy of all
Gaul seem centred in his speech.

The clock strikes, and in a trice the whole
class is dismounted, and its members have
scampered away to make themselves present-
able for their journey home, and to you, await-

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 113
ing your destiny in the reception room, enter
Versatilia, the beauty, and the society young
lady, and Nell, and you stare at them in wrath-
ful astonishment fully equalled by theirs, and
then, in the following grand outburst of confes-
sion, you are informed that, each one having
planned to outgeneral the others and to become
a wondrous equestrian, the Fates and the wise
fairy who, sitting in a little room overlooking
the ring, presides over the destinies of classes,
have willed that you should be taught together.

“And there are three other young ladies who
have never ridden at all,” the wise fairy says,
“and they are to ride behind you, and you must
do very well in order to encourage them,” she
adds with a kind smile ; and then there isa gen-
eral muster of grooms and horses, and in a
moment you are all in your saddles and walk-
ing about the ring, into which, an instant after,
another lady rides easily and gracefully, to be
saluted by both masters with a sigh of relief,
and requested to take the lead, which she does,
trotting lightly across the ring, wheeling into
line and falling into a walk with trained precis-
ion, and now the lesson really begins.

114 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

“You must understand, ladies,” says the
teacher, “that you must always, in riding in class,
keep a distance of about three feet between
your horse and the one before you, and that
you must preserve this equally in the corners,
on the short sides of the school, and on the
long sides.”

“That’s easy enough, I’m sure,” says the so-
ciety young lady, taking it upon herself to
answer, and eliciting an expression of astonish-
ment from the teacher, not because he is sur-
prised, habit having rendered him sadly familiar
with young women of her type, but because he
wishes to relegate her to her proper position of
submissive silence as soon as may be.

“You think so?” he asks. ‘ Then we shall
depend on you to regard the distance with great
accuracy. At present you are two feet too far
in the rear. Forward! Now, ladies, when I
say ‘forward,’ it is not alone for one; it is for
all of you; each one must look and see whether
or not her horse is in the right place. And she
must not bend sidewise to do it, Miss Versa-
tilia. She must look over her horse’s head be-
tween his ears. Now, forward! Now, look

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 115

straight between your horse’s ears, each one of
you, and see something on the horse before
you that is just on a line with the top of his
head, and use that as a guide to tell you
whether or not you are in place! Now, for-
ward, Miss — Miss Lady! Not so fast! Keep
walking! Do not let himtrot! Keep up in
the corners! Do not let your horse go there
to think! Use your whip lightly! Not so,
not so!”’ as the society young lady brings down
her whip, half on the shoulder of gentle Toto,
half on his saddle, and sets him dancing lightly
out of the line, to the discomfiture of Versa-
tilia’s horse, who follows from a sense of duty.
“Take your places again,” cries your teacher,
“and keep to the wall! If you had had proper
control of your horse, that would not have hap-
pened, Miss Versatilia! Now, Miss Lady, hold
your whip in the hollow of your hand, and use
it by a slight movement, not by raising your
arm and lashing, lashing, lashing as if you were
on the race course. A lady is not a jockey, and
she should employ her whip almost as quietly
as she moves her left foot. Forward, forward !
And keep on the track, ladies! Keep your

116 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

horses’ heads straight by holding your reins
perfectly even, then their bodies will be straight,
and you will make one line instead of being on
six lines as youare now. And, Miss Esmeralda,
forward! Use your whip! Not so gently! It
is not always enough to give your horse one
little tap. Give him many, one after the other
with quickened movement, so that he will
understand that you are in a hurry. It is like
the reveille which sounds ever louder until
everybody is wide awake !

“Now, you must not make circles! Make
squares! Go into the corners! Don’t pull
on your horse’s head, Miss Nell! He thinks
that you mean him to stop, and then you
whip him and he tries to go on, and you
pull again, and he knows not what to think.
Always carry out whatever purpose you begin
with your horse if you can. If sometimes you
make a mistake, and cannot absolutely correct
it because of those behind you, guide your
horse to his proper place, and the next time
that you come to that part of the ring, make
him go right! Forward, forward! Ladies,
not one of you isin the right place! Keep up!

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 117

Keep up! Miss Lady, you must go forward
regularly! Now prepare to trot! No, no!
Walk! When I say, ‘ Prepare to trot,’ it is not
for you to begin, but to think of what you
must do to begin, and you must not let your
horses go until I give the second order, and
then not too fast at first. Now, prepare to
trot! Trot! Not quite so fast, Miss Lady;
gently! Keep up, keep up, Miss Beauty!
Miss Esmeralda, you are sitting too far to the
left ; your left shoulder is too far back! Don’t
hold your hands so high, Miss Versatilia !
Rise straight, Miss Esmeralda! Now, remem-
ber, ladies, what I say is for all. Prepare to
whoa! Whoa!”’

The leader, by an almost imperceptible series
of movements, first sitting down in her saddle,
then slightly relaxing her hold of the reins,
and turning both hands very slightly inward,
brings her horse to a walk and continues on her
way. The others, with more or less awkward-
ness, come to a full stop, and your teacher
laughs.

“When I say that,” he explains, “I mean to
cease trotting, not to stop. Go forward, and

118 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

remember how you have been taught to go for-
ward, Miss Esmeralda. It is not enough to
frown at your horse. Now, prepare to trot!
Trot!” And then he repeats again and again
that series of injunctions which already seems
so threadbare to you, Esmeralda, but which you
do not follow, not because you do not try, but
because you have not full control of your mus-
cles, and then comes once more the order,
“Prepare to whoa. Whoa!” and a volley of
sharp reminders about distance and about the
solemn duty of keeping a horse moving while
turning corners, and once more the column
proceeds as regularly as possible.

‘“‘T observe,” says your teacher, riding close
to you, “that you seem timid, Miss Esmeralda.
Do you feel frightened.”

“No,” you assure him.

‘Then it is because you are nervous that you
are so rigid. Try not to be stiff. Give your-
self a little more flexibility in the fingers, the
wrists, the elbows, everywhere! You are not
tired? No? Be easy then, be easy!”’ And
you remember that you have been likened unto
a poker, and sadly think that, perhaps the
comparison was just.

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 119

‘““The other master shall ride with you for a
few rounds,” he continues; ‘ that will give you
confidence, and you will not be nervous.” You
indignantly disclaim the possession of nerves,
he smiles indulgently, and the other teacher
rides up beside you, and advises you steadily
and quietly during the next succession of trot-
ting and walking, and, conscious of not exert-
ing yourself quite so much and of being easier,
you begin to think that perhaps you have a
nerve or two somewhere, and you determine to
conquer them.

“You are sitting too far to the right now,”
says your new guide, the most quiet of North
Britons. ‘There should be about half an inch
of the saddle visible to you beyond the edge of
your habit, if it fit quite smooth, but you would
better not look down to see it. It would do no
harm for once, perhaps, but it would look queer,
and might come to be a habit. Try to judge
of your position by the feeling of your shoul-
ders and by thinking whether you are observ-
ing every rule ; but, once in a great while, when
you are walking, take your reins in your left
hand, pass your right hand lightly along the

120 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. -

edge of your saddle and satisfy yourself that
you are quite correct in position. If you be
quite sure that you can take a downward glance,
without moving your head, try it occasionally,
but very rarely. Use this, in fact,as you would
use a measure to verify a drawing after employ-
ing every other test, and if any teacher notice
you and reprove you for doing it, do not allow
yourself to use it again for two or three les-
sons, for, unless you can be quiet about it, it is
better not to use it at all.”

“ Ladies, ladies,” cries a new voice, at the
sound of which the leader is seen to sit even
better than before, ‘this is not a church, that
you should go to sleep while you are taught
truth! Attend to your instructor! Keep up
when he tells you. Make your movements
with energy. You tire-him; you tire me; you
tire the good horses! Now, then, rouse your-
selves! Prepare to trot! Trot!’ And away
go the horses, each one seeming to feel new
vigor, for it is not every hour that they hear
the strong voice which means that instant obe-
dience must be rendered. “Keep up! keep
up!” cries your teacher. ‘‘Come on!” says

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 121

your own guide, and then pauses himself, to urge
on the beginners behind you, and for a minute
or two the orders follow one another thick and
fast, the three men working together, each
seeming to have eyes for each pupil, and to
divine the intentions of his coadjutors, and
then comes the order, “ Prepare to whoa!
Whoa!” and the master sits down on the
mounting-stand, and frees his mind on the
subject of corners, a topic which you begin to
think is inexhaustible.

“Please show these ladies how to go into a
corner,’ he concludes, and your teacher does
so, executing the movement so marvelously
that it seems as if he would have no difficulty
in performing it in any passageway through
which his horse could walk in a straight line.
The whole class gazes enviously, to be brought
to a proper frame of mind by a sharp expostu-
latory fire of: “Keep your distance! For-
ward!” with about four times as many warn-
ings addressed to the society young lady as to
all the others; and then suddenly, unexpectedly,
the clock strikes and the lesson is over.

The society young lady dresses herself with

122 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

much precision and deliberation, and announces
that she will never, no, never! never so long as
she lives, come again; and in spite of Nell’s
attempts to quiet her, she repeats the state-
ment in the reception room, in the master’s
hearing, aiming it straight at his quiet coun-
tenance.

“No?” he says, not so much disturbed as

she could desire. ‘You should not despair,
you will learn in time.”’
“‘T don’t despair,” she answers ; “ iia

know something, and I will not be treated as if
I knew nothing.”

‘‘“Ab, you know something,” he repeats, in
an interested way. ‘But what you do not
know, my young lady, is how little that some-
thing is! This is a school; you come here to
be taught. I will not cheat you by not teach-
ing you.”

“And it is no way to teach! Three men
ordering a class at once!”

‘Ah, it is ‘no way toteach’! Now, itis I who
am taking a lesson from you. I am greatly
obliged, but I must keep to my own old way. It
may be wrong — for you, my young lady — but

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 123

it has made soldiers to ride, and little girls, and
other young ladies, and I am content. And
these others? Are they not coming any
more ?”’

And every one of those cowardly girls hud-
dles away behind you, Esmeralda, and leaves
you to stammer, ‘‘ Y-yes, sir, but you do s-scold
a little hard.”’

“ That,” says the master, “is my big voice to
make the horses mind, and to make sure that
you hear it. And I told you the other day that
I spoke for your good, not for my own. If
I should say every time I want trotting, ‘My
dear and much respected beautiful young ladies,
please to trot,’ how much would you learn ina
morning?”

“We are ladies,” says the society young lady,
‘‘and we should be treated as ladies.”

“And you—or these others, since you
retire — are my pupils, and shall be treated as
my pupils,’ he says with a courtly bow and a
‘“Good morning,” and you go away trying to
persuade the society young lady to reconsider.

“Not that I care much whether she does or
not,” Nell says confidentially to you, ‘She’s too

124 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

overbearing for me,’ and just at that minute the
voice of the society young lady is heard to call
the master “overbearing,” and you and Nell
exchange delighted, mischievous smiles.

Now for that stiffness of yours, Esmeralda,
there is a remedy, as there is for everything but
death, and you should use it immediately, before
the rigidity becomes habitual. Continue your
other exercises, but devote only about a third as

much time to them, and use the other two thirds ©

for Delsarte movements.

First: Let your hands hang loosely from the
wrist, and swing them lifelessly to and fro.
Execute the movement first with the right hand
then with the left, then with both.

Second: Let the fingers hang from the
knuckles, and shake them in the same way and
in the same order.

Third: Let the forearm hang from the elbow,
and proceed in like manner.

Fourth: Let the whole arm hang from the
shoulder, and swing the arms by twisting the
torso.

Execute the finger and hand movements
with the arms hanging at the side, ex-

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 125

tended sidewise, stretched above the head,
thrust straight forward, with the arms thrust
straight forward and the forearms bent at right
angles to them and with the arms flung back-
ward as far as possible. Execute the forearm
movements with the arms falling at the side, and
also with the elbow as high as the shoulder.

After you have performed these exercises for
a few days, you will begin to find it possible to
make yourself limp and lifeless when necessary,
and the knowledge will be almost as valuable as
the ability to hold yourself firm and steady.
You will find the exercises in Mrs. Thompson’s
“Society Gymnastics,” but these are all that
you will need for at least one week, especially if
you have to devote many hours to the task of
persuading the society young lady not to leave
your class unto you desolate,

126 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

IX.

“Left wheel into line! ” and they
wheel and obey.
Tennyson.

HEN you arrive at the school for your
second class lesson, Esmeralda, you
find the dressing-room pervaded by
a silence as clearly indicative of a

recent tempest as the path cloven through a

forest bya tornado. From the shelter of

screens and from retired nooks, come sounds
indicative of garments doffed and donned with
abnormal celerity and severity, but never a word
of joking, and never a cry for deft-fingered

Kitty’s assistance, and then, little by little, even

these noises die away, and the palace of the

Sleeping Beauty could not be more quiet. No

girl stirs from her lurking-place, until you your-

self issue from your pet corner, and then Nell,

a warning finger on her lip, noiselessly emerges

from hers, and you go into the reception room

together, and she explains to you that, despite

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 127

her announcement that she would never come
again, the society young lady has appeared, and
has announced her intention to defend what she
grandly terms her position as a lady.

“© And the master will think us, her associates,
as unruly as she is!’’ Nell almost sobs. “If I
were he, I would send the whole class home,
tiere! ’- But the other girls now enter, each
magnificently polite to the others, and the file of
nine begins its journey along the wall, attended as
before, the society young lady taking great pains
about distance, and really doing very well, but
the beauty sitting with calm negligence which
soon brings a volley of remonstrance from both
teachers, who address her much after the fash-
ion of Sydney Smith’s saying, “ You are on the
high road toruin the moment you think yourself
rich enough to be careless.”’

“You must not keep your whip in contact
with your horse’s shoulder all the time,” lec-
tures one of the teachers, “if you do, yeu have
no means of urging him to go forward a little
faster. Keep it pressed against the saddle, not
slanting outward or backward. When you use
it, do it without relaxing your hold upon the

128 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

reins, for if, by any mischance, your horse should
start quickly, you will need it. Forward, ladies,
forward! Don’t stop in the corners! Use
your whips a very little, just as you begin to
turn! Miss Esmeralda, keep to the wall! No,
no! Don’t keep to the wall by having your
left rein shorter than your right! They should
be precisely even.”’

“As you approach the corner,” says the
other teacher quietly, speaking to you alone,
“carry your right hand a little nearer to your
left without bending your wrist, so that your
rein will just touch your horse’s neck on the
right side. That will keep his head straight.”’

“But he seems determined to go to the
right,”’ you object.

‘“‘That is because your right rein is too short
now. While we are going down the long side
of the school, make the reins precisely even.
Now, lay the right rein on his neck, use your
whip and touch him with your heel to make
him go on; bend your right wrist to turn him,
use your whip once more, and go on again!”

‘“‘Forward, Miss Esmeralda, forward!”’ cries
the other teacher.

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 129

“That is because Miss Lady did not go into
the corner, and so is too far in advance,” your
teacher explains. ‘You must, in class, keep
your distance as carefully when the rider imme-
diately before you is wrong as when she is
right. It is the necessity of doing that, of hav-
ing to be ready for emergencies, to think of
others as much as of your horse and of your-
self, that give class teaching much of its value.”

“Forward, ladies, forward,” cries the other
teacher. ‘‘ Remember that you are not to go to
sleep! Now prepare to trot, and don’t go too
fast at first. Remember always to change
from one gait to another gently, for your own
sake, that you may not be thrown out of
position ; for your horse’s, that he may not be
startled, and made unruly and ungraceful.
He has nerves as well as you. Now, prepare
to trot! Trot! Shorten your reins, Miss
Beauty! Shorten them!” and during the
next minute or two, while the class trots
about a third of a mile, the poor beauty hears
every command in the manual addressed to
her, and smilingly tries, but tries in vain, to
obey them; but in an unhappy moment the

130 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. .

teacher’s glance falls on the society young lady
and he bids her keep her right shoulder back.
“You told me that before,” she says, rather
more crisply than is prescribed by any of the
manuals of etiquette which constitute her sole
library.

“Then why don’t you do it?”’ is his answer.
“Keep your left shoulder forward,” he says a
moment later, whereupon the society young
lady turns to the right, and plants herself in the
centre of the ring with as much dignity as is
possible, considering that her horse, not having
been properly stopped, and feeling the nervous
movements of her hands, moves now one leg
and now another, now draws his head down
pulling her forward on the pommel, and gener-
ally disturbs the beautiful repose of manner
upon which she prides herself.

“You are tired? No? Frightened? Your
stirrup is too short? You are not comfort-
able?’’ demands the teacher, riding up beside
her. “Is there anything which you would like
to have me do?”’

“T don’t like to be told to do two things at
once,’ she responds in a tone which should be

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 131

felt by the thermometer at the other end of the
ring.

“But you must do two things at once, and
many more than two, on horseback,” he says;
“when you are rested, take your place in the
Ime.”

“T think I will dismount,” she says.

“Very well,” and before she has time to
change her mind, a bell is rung, a groom guides
her horse to the mounting-stand, the master
himself takes her out of the saddle, courte-
ously bids her be seated in the reception room
and watch the others, and she finds her little dem-
onstration completely and effectually crushed,
and, what is worse, apparently without inten-
tion. Nobody appears to be aware that she
has intended a rebellion, although ‘“ whole
Fourth of Julys seem to bile in her veins.”

“Now,” the teacher goes on, “we will turn
to the right, singly. Turn! Keep up, ladies!
“Keep up! Ride straight! To the right again!
Turn!” and back on the track, on the other
side of the school, the leader in the rear, the
beginners in advance, you continue until two
more turns to the right replace you.

132 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

“That was all wrong,’ the teacher says,
cheerfully. ‘You did not ride straight, and
you did not ride together. Your horses’ heads
should be in lne with one another every step
of the way across the school, and then when
you arrive at the track and turn to the right
again, your distance will be correct. Now we
will have a little trot, and while you are resting
afterward, you shall try the turn again.”

The society young lady, watching the scene
in sulkiness, notes various faults in each rider
and feels that the truly promising pupil of the
class is sitting in her chair at that moment;
but she says nothing of the kind, contenting
herself by asking the master, with well-adjusted
carelessness, if it would not be better for the
teacher to speak softly.

“Tt gives a positive shock to the nerves to
be so vehemently addressed,” she says, with the’
air of a Hammond advising an ignorant nurse.

‘That is what he has the intention to do,”
replies the other. “It is necessary to arouse
the rider’s will and not to let her sleep, but if it
were not, the teacher of riding, or anybody who
has to give orders, orders, orders all day long,

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 133

must speak from an expanded chest, with his
lungs full of air, or at night he will be dumb.
The young man behind the counter who has to
entreat, to persuade, to beg, to be gentle, he
may make his voice soft, but to speak with
energy in a low tone is to strain the vocal cords
and to injure thelungs permanently. The opera
singer finds to sing piano, pianissimo more
wearisome than to make herself heard above a
Wagner orchestra. The orator, with everybody
still and listening with countenance intent,
dares not to speak softly, except now and then
for contrast. In the army we have three
months’ rest, and then we go to the surgeon,
and he examines our throats and lungs, and sees
whether or not they need any treatment. If
you go to the camp of the military this summer,
‘you will find the young officers whom you know
in the ball-room so soft and so gentle, not
whispering to their men, but shouting, and the
best officer will have the loudest shout.”

The society young lady remembers the
stories which she has heard her father and
uncles tell of that “officer’s sore throat,”
which in 1861 and 1862, caused so many ludi-

134 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

crous incidents among the volunteer soldiery,
the energetic drill master of one day being
transformed into a voiceless pantomimist by
the next, but, ike Juliet when she spoke, she
says nothing, and now the teacher once more
cries, ‘Turn!’ and then, suddenly, “ Prepare
to stop! Stop! Now look at your line! No
two of you have your horses’ heads even!
And how many of you were riding straight ?”’

A dead silence gives a precisely correct
‘answer, and again he cries, ‘“‘ Forwani ij jeee
repetition of the movement is demanded, and
is received with cries of “ This is not good,
ladies! This is not good! We will try again
by and by. Now, prepare to change hands in
nie:

The leader, turning at one corner of the
school, makes a line almost like a reversed
“s” to the corner diagonally opposite, and
comes back to the track on the left hand, the
others straggling after with about as much
precision and grace as Jill followed Jack down
the hill; but, before they are fairly aware how
very ill they have performed the manceuvre,
they perceive that their teacher not only aimed

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 135

at having them learn how to turn to the left at
each corner, but also at giving himself an op-
portunity to make remarks about their feet and
the position thereof, and at the end of five min-
utes each girl feels as if she were a centipede,
and you, Esmeralda, secretly wonder whether
something in the way of mucilage or thumb-
tacks might not be used to keep your own rid-
ing boots close to the saddle. “ And don’t let
your left foot swing,’’ says the teacher in clos-
ing his exhortations ; “‘hold it perfectly steady! |
Now change hands in file, and come back to the
track on the right again, and we will have a
little trot.”

“And before you begin,” lectures the mas-
ten, twill tell’ you something. The- faster
you go, after once you know how to stay in
your saddle, the better for you, the better for
your horse. You see the great steamer cross-
ing the ocean when under full headway, and
she can turn now this way and now that, with
the least little touch of the rudder, but when
she is creeping, creeping through the narrow
channel, she must have a strong, sure hand at
the helm, and when she is coming up to her

136 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

wharf, easy, easy, she must swing in a wide
circle. That is why my word to you is always
‘Forward! Forward!’ and again, ‘ Forward!’
There is a scientific reason underlying this, if
you care to knowit. When you go fast, neither
you nor your horse has time to feel the press-
ure of the atmosphere from above, and that is
why it seems as if you were flying, and he is
happy and exhilarated as well as you. You will
see the tame horse in the paddock gallop about
for his pleasure, and the wild horse on the prai-
rie will start and run for miles in mere sportive-
ness. So, if you want to have pleasure on
horseback, ‘ Forward !’”

While the little trot is going on, the society
young lady improves the shining hour by ask-
ing the master “if he do not think it cruel to
make a poor horse go just as fast as it can,”’ to
which he replies that the horse will desire
to go quite as long as she can or will, where-
upon she withdraws into the cave of sulkiness
again, but brightens perceptibly as you dis-
mount and join her.

“You do look so funny, Esmeralda,” she
begins. ‘Your feet do seem positively im-
mense, as the teacher said.”

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 157

“Pardon me; I said not that,” gently inter-
poses the teacher; “only that they looked too
big; bigger than they are, when she turns
them outward.”

“And you do sit very much on one side,”
she continues to Versatilia; ‘and your crimps
are quite flat, my dear,’ to the beauty.

“Never mind; they aren’t fastened on with
a safety pin,” retorts the beauty, plucking up
spirit, unexpectedly.

“QO, no! of course not,’ the wise fairy in-
terposes, with a little laugh. “You young
ladies do not do such things, of course. But,
-do you know, I heard of a lady who wore a
switch into a riding-school ring one day, and
it came off, and the riding master had to keep
it in his pocket until the end of the lesson.”

Little does the wise fairy know of the society
young lady’s ways! What she has determined
to say, she declines to retain unsaid, and so she
cries: “And you do thrust your head forward
so awkwardly, Nell!”

““*We are ladies,’’”’ quotes Nell, ‘‘and we can’t
answer you,” and the society young lady finds
herself alone with the wise fairy, who is sud-

138 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL

denly very busy with her books, and, after a
moment, she renews her announcement that she
is not coming any more. “ Well, I wouldn't,”
the wise fairy says, looking thoughtfully at her.
“ You make the others unhappy, and that is not
desirable, and you will not be taught. I gave
you fair warning that the master would be
severe, but those who come here to learn enjoy
their lessons. Once ina great while there are
ladies who do not wish to be taught, but they
find it out very soon, as you have.”

“There is always a good reason for every-
thing,” the master says gravely. ‘“ Now, I have
seen many great men who could not learn to
ride. There was Gambetta. Nothing would
make a fine rider of that man! Why? Be-
cause for one moment that his mind was on his
horse, a hundred it was on something else.
And Jules Verne! He could not learn! And
Emile Girardin! They had so many things to
think about! Now, perhaps it is so with this
young lady. Society demands so much, one
must do so many things, that she cannot bend
her mind to this one little art. It is unfortu-
nate, but then she is not the first!”” And with

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 159

a little salute he turns away, and the society
young lady, much crosser than she was before
he invented this apology for her, comes into the
dressing room and — bids you farewell? Not
at all! Says that she is sorry, and that she
knows that she can learn, and is going to try.
“ AndI suppose now that nothing will make her
go!”’ Nell says, lugubriously, as you saunter
homeward.

You are still conscious of stiffness, Esmer-
alda? That is not a matter for surprise or for
anxiety. All your life you have been working
for strength, for even your dancing-school.
teacher was not one of those scientific ballet-
masters, who, like Carlo Blasis, would have
taught you that the strength of a muscle often
deprives it of flexibility and softness. You de-
sire that your muscles should be rigid or relaxed
at will. Go and stand in front of your mirror,
and let your head drop toward either shoulder,
causing your whole torso to become imp. Now
hold the head erect, and try to reproduce the
feeling. The effect is awkward, and not to be
practised in public, but the exercise enables
you to perceive for yourself when you are stiff

140 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

about the shoulders and waist. Now drop your
head backward, and swing the body, not trying
to control the head, and persist until you can
thoroughly relax the muscles of the neck, a
work which you need not expect to accomplish
until after you have made many efforts. Now
execute all your movements for strengthening
the muscles, very slowly and lightly, using as
little force as possible. After you can do this
fairly well, begin by executing them quickly and
forcibly, then gradually retard them, and make
them more gently, until you glide at last into
perfect repose. This will take time, but the
good results will appear, not only in your riding,
but also in your walking and in your dancing.
You and Nell might practise these Delsarte
exercises together, for no especial dress is
needed for them, and companionship will remove
the danger of that dulness which, it must be ad-
mitted, sometimes besets the amateur, unsus-
tained by the artist’s patient energy. Before
you take another class lesson, you may have an
exercise ride, in which to practise what you
have learned. “Tried to learn!” do you say?
Well, really, Esmeralda, one begins to have
hopes of you!

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. a

x

— Ye couldn’t have made him a rider,
And then ye know, boys will be boys, and hosses,
— well, hosses is hosses !
fTarte.

JHEN you and Nell go to take your
exercise ride, Esmeralda, you must
assume the air of having ridden
: before you were able to walk, and of
being so replete with equestrian knowledge
that the “acquisition of another detail would
cause immediate dissolution,’ as the Normal
college girl said when asked if she knew how
to teach. You must insist on having a certain
horse, no matter how much inconvenience it.
may create, and, if possible, you should order
him twenty-four hours in advance, stipulating
that nobody shall mount him in the interval,
and, while waiting for him to be brought in
from the stable, you should proclaim that he is
a wonderfully spirited, not to say vicious, creat-
ure, but that you are not in the smallest degree

142 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

afraid of him. You should pick up your reins
with easy grace, and having twisted them into
a hopeless snarl, should explain to any specta-
tor who may presume to smile that one “ very
soon forgets these little things, you know, but
they will come back in a little while.”

Having started, you must choose between
steadily trotting or rapidly cantering, absolutely
regardless of the rights or wishes of any one
else, or you must hold your horse to a spiritless
crawl, carefully keeping him in such a position
as to prevent anybody else from outspeeding
you. If you were a man, you would feel it in-
cumbent upon you to entreat your master to
permit you to change horses with him, and
would give him certain valuable information,
derived from quarters vaguely specified as “a
person who knows,” or “ a man who rides a
great deal,’ meaning somebody who is in the
saddle twenty times a year, and duly pays his
livery stable bill for the privilege, and you
would confide to some other exercise rider, if
possible, in the hearing of seven or eight pupils,
that your master was not much of a rider after
all, that the “natural rider was the best,’’ and

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 143

you would insinuate that to observe perfection
it was only necessary to look at you. If, in ad-
dition to this, you could intimate toany worried
or impatient pupils that they had not been
properly taught, you would make yourself gen-
erally beloved, and these are the ways of the
casual exercise rider, male and female. But
you, Esmeralda, are slightly unfitted for the
perfect assumption of this part by knowing
how certain things ought to be done, although
you cannot do them, and alas! you are not yet
adapted to the humbler but prettier character of
the real exercise rider, who is thoroughly taught,
and whose every movement is a pleasure to be-
hold.

There are many such women and a few men
who prefer the ring to the road for vari-
ous reasons, and from them you may learn
much, both by observation and from the hints
which many of them will give you if they find
that you are anxious to learn, and that you are
really nothing more pretentious than a solitary
student. So into the saddle you go, and you
and Nell begin to walk about incompany. “In
company,’ indeed, for about half a round, and

i44 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

then you begin to fall behind. Touching your
Abdallah lightly with whip and heel starts him
into a trot, and coming up beside Nell you
start off her Arab, and both horses are rather
astonished to be checked. What do these girls
want, they think, and when you fall behind again,
it takes two strokes of the whip to urge Abdal-
lah forward, Arab is unmoved by your passing
him, and you find the breadth of the ring divid-
ing you and Nell. You pause, she turns to the
right, crosses the space between you, turns again
and is by your side, and now both of you begin to
see what you must do. Nell, who is riding on the
inside, that is to say on the included square, must
check her horse very slightly after turning each
corner, and you must hasten yours a little before
turning, and a little after, soas to give her suffi-
cient space to turn, and, at the same time, to keep
up with her. You, being on her left, must be very
careful every moment to have a firm hold of
your left rein, so as to keep away from her feet,
and she must keep especial watch of her right
rein in order to guard herself.

After each of you has learned her part pretty -
well, you should exchange places and try again,

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 145

and then have a round or two of trotting, keep-
ing your horses’ heads in line. You will find
both of them very tractable to this discipline,
because accustomed to having your master’s
horse keep pace with them, and because they
often go in pairs at the music rides, and you must
not expect that an ordinary livery stable horse
would be as easily managed. It is rather fash-
ionable to sneer at the riding-school horse as
too mild for the use of a good rider, and very
likely, while you and Nell are patiently trying
your little experiment, you will hear a youth
with very evident straps on his trousers, super-
ciliously requesting to have “something spir-
ited’ brought in from the stable for him.

“Not one of your school horses, taught to
tramp atreadmill round, but a regular flyer,” he
explains.

“Ts he a very good rider?” you ask your mas-
ter. ‘Last time he was here I had to take him
off Abdallah,” he says sadly, and then he goes
to the mounting-stand to deny “the regular
flyer,” and to tender instead, ‘(an animal that
we don’t give to everybody, William.”’ Enter
“William,” otherwise Billy Buttons, whom the

146 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

gentleman covetous of a flyer soon finds to be
enough for him to manage, because William,
although accustomed to riders awkward through
weakness, is not used to the manners of what
is called the “ three-legged trotter” ; that is to
say, the man whose unbent arms and tightened
reins make a straight line from his shoulders to
his horse’s mouth, while his whole weight is
thrown upon the reins by a backward inclina-
tion of his body.

If you would like to know how Billy feels
about it, Esmeralda, bend your chin toward
your throat, and imagine a bar of iron placed
across your tongue and pulling your head up-
ward. It would hurt you, but you could raise
your head, and still go forward, making wild
gestures with your hands, kicking, perhaps, in a
ladylike manner, as Gail Hamilton kicked Hali-
carnassus, but by no means stopping. Now
suppose that bar of iron drawn backward by
reins passing one on each side of your shoulders
and held firmly between your scapule; you
could not go forward without almost breaking
your neck, could you? No morecould Billy, if
his rider would let out his reins, bend his elbows,

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 147

and hold his hands low, almost touching his sad-
dle, but, as it is, he goes on, and if he should
rear by and by, and if his rider should slide off,
be not alarmed. The three-legged trotter is not
the kind of horseman to cling to his reins, and
he will not be dragged, and Billy is too good-
tempered not to stop the moment he has rid
himself of his tormentor. But while he is still
on Billy’s back, and flattering himself that he is
doing wonders in subjugating the “horse that
we don’t give to everybody,” do you and Nell go
to the centre of the ring and see if you can stop
properly. Pretty well done, but wait a moment
before trying it again, for it is not pleasant to a
horse. Sit still a few minutes, and then try and
see if you can back your horse a step or two.
In order to do this, it is not enough to sit up
straight and to say “back,” or even to say
“bake,” which, according to certain “natural
riders,” is the secret of having the movement
executed properly. You must draw yourself
up and lean backward, touching your horse both
with your foot and with your whip, in order that
he may stand squarely, and you must raise your
wrists a little, at the same time turning them

148 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

inward. The horse will take a step, you must
instantly sit up straight, lower your hands, and
then repeat the movement until he has backed
far enough. Four steps will be quite as many
as you should try when working thus by your-
self, because you do not wish to form any bad
habits,and your master will probably find much
to criticise in your way of executing the move-
ment. The most that you can do for yourself
is to be sure that Abdallah makes but one step
for each of your demands. If he make two,
lower your hands, and make him go forward,
for a horse which backs unbidden is always
troublesome and may sometimes be dangerous.

“Just watch that man on Billy Buttons,”
says your master, coming up to you, “and make
up your minds never to do anything that you
see him do. And look at these two ladies who
are mounting now, and see how well it is possi-
ble to ride without being taught in school, pro-
vided one rides enough. They cannot trot a
rod, but they have often been in the saddle half
a day at a time in Spanish America, whence
they come, and they can ‘lope,’ as they call it,
for hours without drawing rein. They sit

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 149

almost, but not quite straight, and they have
strength enough in their hands to control any
of our horses, although they complain that
these English bits are poor things compared
to the Spanish bit. You see, they can stay
on, although they cannot ride scientifically.”

“And isn’t that best ?” asked Nell.

“Tt is better,’ corrects the master. ‘‘ The
very best is to stay on because one rides scien-
tifically, and that is what I hope that you two
will do byand by. There’s that girl who always
brings in a bag of groceries for her horse!
Apples this time!”

“Isn't it a good thing to give a horse a tid-
bit of some kind after a ride ?”’ asked Nell.

“« Good,’ if it be your own horse, but not good
in a riding-school. It tends to make the horses
impatient for the end of a ride, and sometimes
makes them jealous of one another at the mount-
ing-stand, and keeps them there so long as to
inconvenience others who wish to dismount.
Besides, careless pupils, like that girl, have a
way of tossing a paper bag into the ring after
the horse has emptied it, and although we
always pick it up as soon as possible, it may

150 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

cause another horse to shy. A dropped hand-
kerchief is also dangerous, for a horse is a sus-
picious creature, and fears anything novel as a
woman dreads a mouse.”

What is the trouble on the mounting-stand ?
Nothing, except that a tearful little girl wants
‘her dear Daisy; she never rides anything else,
and she hates Clifton, and does not like Rex
and Jewel canters, and she wants Da-a-isy!”’

“But it is better for you to change horses
now and then, and Daisy is not fit to be in the
ring to-day,” says your master. ‘Jewel is very
easy and good-tempered. Will you have him ?”

“No, I'll have Abdallah.”

“ A lady is riding him.”

“Well, I want him.”

It is against rules for your master to suggest
such a thing to you, Esmeralda, but suppose
you go up to the mounting-stand and offer to
take Jewel yourself and let her have Abdallah.
You do it; your master puts you on Jewel, and
sends the wilful little girl away on Abdallah,
and then comes up to you and Nell, thanks you,
and says, ‘It was very good of you, but she
must learn some day to ride everything, and I
shall tell her so, and next time!”’

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 151

He looks capable of giving her Hector, Irish
Hector, who is wilful as the wind, but in reward
for your goodness he bestows a little warning
about your whips upon Nell, who has a fancy
for carrying hers slantwise across her body, so
that both ends show from the back, and the
whole whip is quite useless as far as the horse
is concerned, although picturesque enough with
its loop of bright ribbon.

“It makes one think of a circus picture,” he
says; “and, Miss Esmeralda, don’t hold your
whip with the lash pointing outward, to tickle
Miss Nell’s horse, and to make you look like an
American Mr. Briggs ‘going to take a run with
the Myopias, don’t you know.’ Isn’t this a
pretty horse ?”’

“Well, I don’t know,” you say frankly ; “I’m
no judge. I don’t know anything about a horse.”

For once your master loses his self-posses-
sion, and stares unreservedly. “Child,” he
says, “I never, never before saw anybody in
this ring who didn’t know all about a horse.”

“Well, but I really don’t, you know.”’

““No, but nobody ever says so. Now just
hear this new pupil instruct me.”

152 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

The new pupil, who thinks a riding habit
should be worn over two or three skirts, and
who is consequently sitting with the aerial ele-
gance of a feather bed, is riding with her snaffle
rein, the curb tied on her horse’s neck, and is
clasping it by the centre, allowing the rest to
hang loose, so that Clifton, supposing that she
means to give him liberty to browse, is looking
for grass among the tan. Not finding it, he
snorts occasionally, whereupon she calls him
“poor thing,’ and tells him that “it is a
warm day, and that he should rest, so he
should !”’

“Your reins are too long,” says your master.

“Do you mean that they are too long, or that
I am holding them so as to make them too
long,” she inquires, in a precise manner.

“They are right enough. Our saddlers know
their business. But you are holding them so
that you might as well have none. Shorten
them, and make him bring his head up in its
proper place.”

“But I think it’s cruel to treat him so, when
he’s tired, poor thing! I always hold my reins
in the middle when I’m driving, and my horse

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 153

goes straight enough. This one seems dizzy.
He goes round and round.”’

“He wouldn’t if he were in harness with two
shafts to keep his body straight and somebody
behind him to keep his head straight ’’—

“But then why wouldn’t it bea good thing
to have some kind of a light shaft for a begin-
ner’s horse ?”’ 3

“Tt would be a neat addition toa side sad-
dle,” says your master, ‘‘ but shorten your reins.
Take one in each hand. Leave about eight
inches of rein between your hands. There!
See. Now guide your horse.”

He leaves her, in order that he may enjoy the
idea of the side saddle with shafts, and she
promptly resumes her old attitude which she feels
is elegant, and when Clifton wanders up beside
Abdallah, she sweetly asks Nell, “Is this your
first lesson? Do you think this horse is good?
The master wants me to pull on my reins, but
I think it is inhuman, and I won’t, and ’’— but
Clifton strays out of hearing, and you arouse
yourselves to remember that you are having
more fun than work.

There is plenty of room in the ring, now, so

154 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

you change hands, and circle to the left, first
walking and then trotting, slowly at first, and
then rapidly, finding to your pleasant surprise,
that, just as you begin to think that you can go
no further, you are suddenly endowed with new
strength and can make two more rounds. “A
good half mile,” your master says, approvingly,
as you fall into a walk and pass him, and then
you do a volte or two, and one little round at a
canter, and then walk five minutes, and dis-
mount to find the rider of the alleged William
assuring John, the head groom, that that re-
doubtable animal needs “ taking down.”’

«Shall ride him with spurs next time,” he
says. “I can manage him, but he would be too
much for most men,” and away he goes and a
flute-voiced little boy of eight mounts William,
retransformed into Billy Buttons, and guides
him like a lamb, and you escape up stairs to
laugh. But you have no time for this before
the merciful young woman enters to say
that she is going to another school, where
she can do as she pleases and have better
horses, too, and the more you and Nell assure
her that there is no school in which she can

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 155

learn without obedience, and that her horse was
too good, if anything, the more determined she
_ becomes, and soon you wisely desist.

As she departs, “Oh, dear,” you say, “I
thought there was nothing but fun at riding-
school, and just see all these queer folks.”

““My dear,’ says philosophic Nell, “they
are part of the fun. And we are fun to the
old riders; and we are all fun to our
master.”

Here you find yourselves enjoying a bit of
fun from which your master is shut out, for
three or four girls come up from the ring to-
gether, and, not seeing you, hidden behind your
screens, two, in whom you and Nell have
already recognized saleswomen from whom you
have more than once bought laces, begin to talk
to overawe the others.

“My deah,” says one, “now I think of it, I
weally don’t like the setting of these diamonds
that you had given you last night. It’s too
heavy, don’t you think ?”

The other replies in a tone which would
cheat a man, but in which you instantly detect
an accent of surprise and a determination te

156 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

play up to her partner as well as possible, that
she “liked it very well.”

‘‘T should have them reset,” says the former
speaker. ‘ Like mine, you know ; light and airy.
Deah me, I usedn’t to care for diamonds, and
now I’m puffectly infatooated with them, don’t
you know! My!” she screams, catching sight
of a church clock, and, relapsing into her every-
day speech: ‘“ Half-past four! And I am due
at’’— [An awkward pause.] ‘“I promised to
return at four!”

There is no more talk about diamonds, but a
hurried scramble to dress, and a precipitate de-
parture, after which one of the other ladies is
heard to say very distinctly: ‘‘ I remember that
girl as a pupil when I was teaching in a public
school, and I know all about her. Salary, four
dollarsa week. Diamonds!”

“‘ She registered at the desk as Mrs. Some-
thing,” rejoins the other. ‘She only came in
for one ride, and so they gave her a horse with-
out looking up her reference, but one of the mas-
ters knew her real name. Poor little goosey!
She has simply spoiled her chance of ever be-
coming a regular pupil, no matter how much

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 157

she may desire it. No riding master will give
lessons to a person who behaves so. He would
lose more than he gained by it, no matter how
long she took lessons. And they knew every-
body in a riding-school, although they won’t
gossip. I’d as soon try to cheat a Pinkerton
agency,”

“TI know one thing,” Nell says, as you walk
homeward: “I’m going to take an exercise ride
between every two lessons, and I’m going
to ride a new horse every time, if I can get him,
and I’m going to do what I’m told, and I shall
not stop trotting at the next lesson, evenif I
feel as if I should drop out of the saddle. I’ve
learned so much from an exercise ride.”

158 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. ©

XI.

Ride as though you were flying.
Mrs. Norton.

RP ROSS,” Esmeralda? Why? Because
having had seven lessons of various
sorts, and two rides, you do not
feel yourself to be a brilliant horse-
woman? Because you cannot trot more than
half a mile, and because you cannot flatter
yourself that it would be prudent for you to
imitate your favorite English heroines, and to
order your horse brought around to the hall
door for a solitary morning canter? And you
really think that you do well to be angry, and
that, had your teacher been as discreet and as
entirely admirable as you feel yourself to be,
you would be more skilful and better informed ?

Very well, continue to think so, but pray do
not flatter yourself that your mental attitude
has the very smallest fragment of an original
line, curve or angle. Thus, and not otherwise,

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 159

do all youthful equestrians feel, excepting those
doubly-dyed in conceit, who fancy that they
have mastered a whole art in less than twelve
hours. You certainly are not a good rider, and
yet you have received instruction on almost
every point in regard to which you would need
to know anything in an ordinary ride on a good
road. You have not yet been taught every one
of these things, certainly, for she who has been
really taught a physical or mental feat, can
execute it at will, but you have been partly
instructed, and it is yours to see that the in-
struction is not wasted, by not being either.
repeated, or faithfully reduced to practice.
Remember clever Mrs. Wesley’s answer to the
unwise person who said in reproof, ‘‘ You have
told that thing to that child thirty times.”’
“Had I told it but twenty-nine,” replied the
indomitable Susanna, “they had been wasted.”
What you need now is practice, preferably in
the ring with a teacher, but if you cannot
afford that, without a teacher, and road rides
whenever you can have them on a safe horse,
taken from a school stable, if possible, with
companions like yourself, intent upon study

160 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

and enjoyment, not upon displaying their
habits, or, if they be men, the airs of their
horses, and the correctness of their equipment,
or upon racing.

As for the solitary canter, when the kinghy
Fates shall endow that respectable American
sovereign, your father, with a park somewhat
bigger than the seventy-five square feet of
ground inclosed by the iron railing before his
present palace, it will be time enough to think
about that; but you can no more venture upon
a public road alone than an English lady could,
and indeed, your risk in doing so would be
even greater than hers. Why? Because in
rural England all men and all boys, even the
poorest and the humbiest, seem to know in-
stinctively how a horse should be equipped.
True, a Wordsworth and a Coleridge did hesi-
tate for hours over the problem of adjusting a
horse collar, but Johnny Ragamuffin, from the
slums, or Jerry Hickathrift, of some shire with
the most uncouth of dialects, can adjust a slip-
ping saddle, or, in a hand’s turn, can remove a
stone which is torturing a hoof.

Not so your American wayfarer, city bred or

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 161

country grown; it will be wonderful if he can
lengthen a stirrup leather, and, before allowing
such an one to tighten a girth for you, you
would better alight and take shelter behind a
tree, and a good large tree, because he may
drive your horse half frantic by his well-meant
unskilfulness. Besides, Mrs. Grundy very se-
verely frowns on the woman who rides alone,
and there is no appeal from Mrs. Grundy’s
wisdom. Sneer at her, deride her, try, if you
will, to undermine her authority, but obey her
commands and yield to her judgment if you
would have the respect of men, and, what is
of more consequence, the fair speech of women.
And so, Esmeralda, as you really have no cause
for repining, go away to your class lesson, which
has a double interest for you and Nell, because
of the wicked pleasure which you derive from
hearing the master quietly crush the society
young lady with unanswerable logic.

You have seen him with a class of obedient,
well-bred little girls, and know how persuasive
he can be to a child who is really frightened.
You have seen him surrounded by a class of
eager small boys, and beset with a clamorous

162 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

shout of, ‘“‘ Plea-ease let us mount from the
ground.” You have heard his peremptory
“No,” and then, as they turned away discom-
fited, have noted how kindly was his “I will
tell you why, my dear boys. It is because your
legs are too short. Wait until you are tall,
then you shall mount.” You know that when
Versatilia, having attended a party the previous
evening and arisen at five o'clock to practise
Chopin, and then worked an hour at gymnas-
tics, could not, from pure weariness, manage
her horse, how swift was his bound across the
ring, and how carefully he lifted her from the
saddle, and gave her over to the ministrations
of the wise fairy. You know that any teacher
must exact respect from his scholars, and you
detect method in all the little sallies which
almost drive the society young lady to madness,
but this morning it is your turn.

You do, one after the other, all the things
against which you have been warned, and, when
corrected, you look so very dismal and discour-
aged that the Scotch teacher comes quietly to
your side and rides with you, and, feeling that
he will prevent your horse from doing anything

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 163

dangerous, you begin to mend your ways, when
suddenly you hear the master proclaim in a
voice which, to your horrified ears, seems audi-
ble to the whole universe: ‘“‘ Ah, Miss Esmer-
alda! she cannot ride, she cannot do her best,
unless she has a gentleman beside her.” In
fancy’s eye you seem to see yourself blushing
for that criticism during the remainder of your
allotted days, and you almost hope that they will
be few. You know that every girl in the class
will repeat it to other girls, and even to men,
and possibly even to Theodore, and that you
will never be allowed to forget it. Cannot ride
or do your best without a gentleman, indeed !
You could do very well without one gentleman
whom you know, you think vengefully, and
then you turn to the kindly Scotch teacher,
and, with true feminine justice, endeavor to
punish him for another’s misdeeds by telling
him that, if he please, you would prefer to ride
alone. As he reins back, you feel a decided
sinking of the heart and again become con-
scious that you are oddly incapable of doing
anything properly, and then, suddenly, it flashes
upon you that the master was right in his judg-

164 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

ment, and you fly into a small fury of determi-
nation to show him that you can exist “without
a gentleman.” Down go your hands, you
straighten your shoulders, adjust yourself to a
nicety, think of yourself and of your horse
with all the intensity of which you are capable,
and make two or three rounds without reproof.

“Now, says the teacher, “we will try a
rather longer trot than usual, and when any
lady is tired she may go to the centre of the
ring. Prepare to trot! Trot!”

The leader’s eyes sparkle with delight as she
allows her good horse, after a round or two, to
take his own speed, the teacher continues his
usual fire of truthful comments as to shoulders,
hands and reins, and one after another, the
girls leave the track, and only the leader and
you remain, she, calm and cool as an iceberg,
you, flushed, and compelled to correct your
position at almost every stride of your horse,
sometimes obliged to sit close for half a round,
but with your whole Yankee soul set upon —
trotting until your teacher bids you cease.
Can you believe your ears?

“Brava, Miss Esmeralda!” shouts the mas-

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 165

ter. “Go inagain. That is the way. Ah, go
in again! That is the way the rider is made!
Again! Ah, brava!”

“Prepare to whoa! Whoa!” says the teacher,
and both he and your banished cavalier con-
gratulate you, and it dawns upon you that the
society young lady is not the only person whom
the master understands, and is able to manage.
However, you are grateful, and even pluck up
courage to salute him when next you pass him ;
but alas! that does not soften his heart so
thoroughly that he does not warningly ejaculate,
“ Right foot,’ and then comes poor Nell’s turn.
She, reared in a select private school for young
ladies, and having no idea of proper discipline,
ventures to explain the cause of some one of
her misdeeds, instead of correcting it in silence.
She does it courteously, but is met with,
“Ah-h-h! Miss Esmeralda, you know Miss
Nell. Is it not with her on foot as it is on
horseback? Does she not argue?”

You shake your head severely and loyally,
but brave Nell speaks out frankly, “Yes, sir; I
do. But I won’t again.”

“T would have liked to ride straight at him,”

166 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

she confides to you afterwards, ‘“ but he was
right. Still, it is rather astounding to hear the
truth sometimes.”

And now, for the first time, you are allowed
to ride in pairs, and the word “interval,” mean-
ing the space between two horses moving on
parallel lines, is introduced, and you and Nell,
who are together, congratulate yourselves on
having in your exercise ride learned something
of the manner in which the interval may be
preserved exactly, for it is a greater trouble to
the others than that “‘distance” which you have
been told a thousand times to ‘‘keep.” You
have but very little of this practice, however,
before you are again formed in file, and directed
to ‘‘ Prepare to volte singly !”

When this is done perfectly, it is a very pretty
manceuvre, and, the pupils returning to their
places at the same moment, the column con-
tinues on its way with its distances perfectly
preserved, but as no two of your class make
circles of the same size, or move at similar
rates of speed, your small procession finds itself
in hopeless disorder, and in trying to rearrange
yourselves, each one of you discovers that she

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 167

has yet something to learn about turning.
However, after a little trot and the usual clos-
ing walk, the lesson ends, and you retire from
the ring, with the exception of Nell, who, hav-
ing been taught by an amateur to leap in a more
or less unscientific manner, has begged the mas-
ter to give her “one little lesson,’ a proposi-
tion to which he has consented.

The hurdle is brought out, placed half-way
down one of the long sides of the school, and
Nell walks her horse quietly down the other,
turns him, turns him again as she comes on
the second long side, shakes her reins lightly,
putting him to a canter, and is over — “ beau-
tifully,”” you say to yourself, as you watch her
enviously.

“You did not fall off,” the master comments,
coiling the lash of the long whip with which he
has stood beside the hurdle during Miss Nell’s
performance, ‘“‘but you did not guard yourself
against falling when you went up, and had you
had some horses, you might have come down
before he did, although that is not so easy fora
lady as it is for a man. When you start for
a leap, you must draw your right foot well back,

168 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

so as to clasp the pommel with your knee, and,
just as the horse stops to spring upward, you
must lean back and lift both hands a little, and
then, when he springs, straighten yourself, feel
proud and haughty, if you can, and, as he comes
down, lean back once more and raise your hands
again, because your horse will drop on his fore
legs, and you desire him to lift them, that he
may go forward before you do. You should
practise this, counting one, as you lean back-
ward, drawing but not turning the hands
backward and upward; two, as you straighten
yourself with the hands down, and three, as you
repeat the first movement; and, except in mak-
ing a water jump, or some other very long leap,
the ‘two’ will be the shortest beat, as it is in
the waltz. And, although you must use some
strength in raising your hands, you must not
raise them too high, and you must not lean
your head forward or draw your elbows back.
A jockey may, when riding a steeplechase for
money, but he will be angry with himself for
having to do it, and a lady must not. I would
rather that you did not leap again to-day, be-
cause what I told you will only confuse you

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 169

until you have time to think it over and to prac-
tise it by yourself in a chair. And I would
rather that you did not leap again in your own
way, until you have let me see you do it once or
twice more, at least.”

‘You did not have to whip my horse to make
him leap,” Nell says.

“The whip was not to strike him, but to
show him what was ready for him if he refused,”
says the master. ‘‘One must never permit a
horse to refuse without punishing him, for other-
wise he may repeat the fault when mounted by
a poor rider, and a dangerous accident may fol-
low. One must never brutalize a horse —in-
deed, no one but a brute does— but one must
rule him.”’

By this time he has taken Nell from her
saddle and is in the reception room, where he
finds you grouped and gazing at him in a man-
ner rather trying even to his soldierly gravity,
and decidedly amusing to the wise fairy, who
glances at him with a laugh and betakes herself
to her own little nest.

““My young ladies,” he says, “I will show
you one little leap, not high, you know, but a

170 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

little leap sitting ona side saddle,” and, going
out, he takes Nell’s horse, and in a minute you
see him sailing through the air, light as a bird,
and without any of the encouraging shouts used
by some horsemen. It is only a little leap, but
it impresses your illogical minds as no skilful-
ness in the voltes and no haute école airs could
do, for leaping is the crowning accomplishment
of riding in the eyes of all your male friends
except the cavalryman, and when he returns to
the reception room, you linger in the hope of a
little lecture, and you are not disappointed.
“My young ladies,” he says, ‘‘at the point at
which you are in the equestrian art, what you
should do is to keep doing what you know,
over and over again, no matter if you do it
wrong. Keep doing and doing, and by and by
you will do it right. I have tried that plan
of perfecting each step before undertaking an-
other, but it is of no use with American ladies.
You will not do things at all, unless you can do
them well, you say. That is as if you were to
go to a ball, and were to say, ‘ No, I have taken
lessons, I have danced in school, but I am afraid
I cannot do so well as some others. I will not

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 171

dance here.’ That would not be the way to do.
Dance, and again dance, and if you make a little
mistake, dance again! The mistake is of the
past ; itis not matter for troubling ; dance again,
and donot makeit again. And so of riding, ride,
and again ride! Tryall ways. Take your foot
out of the stirrup sometimes, and slip it back
again without stopping your horse, and when you
can do it at the walk, do it at the trot, and keep
rising! And learn not to be afraid to keep
trotting after you are a little tired. Keep trot-
ting! Keep trotting! Then you will know
real pleasure, and you will not hurt your horses,
as you will if you pull them up just as they
begin to enjoy the pace. And then’’—looking
very hard at nothing at all, and not at you,
Esmeralda, as your guilty soul fancies — ‘‘and
then, gentlemen will not be afraid to ride with
you for fear of pee their horses by checking
them too often.”

And with this he goes away, and oh! Esmer-
alda, does not the society young lady make life
pleasant for you and Nell in the dressing-room,
until the beauty attracts general attention by
stating that she has had an hour of torment !

172 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

“Perhaps you have not noticed that most of
these saddles are buckskin,” she continues; ‘I
did not, until I found myself slipping about on
mine to day as if it were glazed, and lo! it was
pigskin, and that made the difference. I would
not have it changed, because the Texan is always
sneering at English pigskin, and I wanted to
learn to ride on it; but, until the last quarter
of the hour, I expected to slip off. I rather
think I should have,” she adds, “only just as I
was ready to slip off on one side, something
would occur to make me slip to the other. I
shall not be afraid of pigskin again, and you
would better try it, every one of you. Suppose
you should get a horse from a livery stable some
day with one of those slippery saddles !”’

“IT am thinking of buying a horse,” says the
society young lady; “‘but the master says that
I do not know enough to ride a beast that has
been really trained. Fancy that!”

“And all the authorities agree with him,”
says Versatilia, who has accumulated a small
library of books on equestrianism since she
began to take lessons. ‘Your horse ought not
to know much more than you do — for if

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 173

he do, you will find him perfectly unman-
ageable.”

Here you and Nell flee on the wings of dis-
cretion. The daring of the girl! To tell the
society young lady that a horse may know more
than she does !

174 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

XII.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy.
Shakespeare.

\ am ND now, Esmeralda, having determined
%) to put your master’s advice into prac-
EEK tice and to ‘“‘keep riding,” you think
that you must have a habit in order to
be ready to take to the road whenever you have
an opportunity, and to be able to accompany
Theodore, should he desire to repeat your music-
ride? And you would like to know just what
it will cost, and everything about it? And first,
what color can you have?

You ‘can’ have any color, Esmeralda, and
you “can” have any material, for that matter.
Queen Guinevere wore grass green silk, and if
her skirt were as long as those worn by Matilda
of Flanders, Norman William’s wife, centuries
after, her women must have spent several hours
daily in mending it, unless she had a new habit
for every ride, or unless the English forest roads

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 175

were wider than they are to-day. But all the
ladies of Arthur’s court seem to have ridden in
their ordinary dress. Enid, for instance, was
arrayed in the faded silk which had been her
house-dress and walking-dress in girlhood, when
she performed her little feat of guiding six armor-
laden horses. Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart
seem to have liked velvet, either green or black,
and to have adorned it with gold lace, and both
probably took their fashions from France; the
young woman in the Scotch ballad was “all in
cramoisie’’ ; Kate Peyton wore scarlet broad-
cloth, but secretly longed for purple, having
been told by a rival, who probably found her
too pretty in scarlet, that green or purple was
‘her color.”

There are crimson velvet and dark blue velvet
and Lincoln green velvet habits without end in
fiction, and in the records of English royal ward-
robes, but, beautiful as velvet is, and exquisitely
becoming as it would be, you would better not
indulge your artistic taste by wearing it. It
would cost almost three times as much as cloth;
_ It would be nearly impossible to make a well
fitting modern skirt of it, and it would be worn

176 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

i
into ugliness by a very few hours of trotting.
Be thankful, therefore, that fashion says that
woollen cloth is the most costly material which
may be used.

In India, during the last two or three seasons,
Englishwomen have worn London-made habits
of very light stuffs, mohairs and fine Bradford
woollens, and there is no reason why any Ameri-
can woman should not do the same. In Hyde
Park, for three summers, in those early morning
hours when some of the best riders go, attended
by a groom, to enjoy something more lively than
the afternoon parade, skirts of light tweed and
covert coats of the same material worn over
white silk shirts, with linen collars and a man’s
tie, have made their wearers look cool and com-
fortable, and duck covert jackets, with ordinary
woollen skirts and linen shirts have had a similar
effect, but American women have rather hesi-
tated as to adopting these fashions, lest some
one, beholding, should say that they were not
correct. Thus did they once think that they
must wear bonnets with strings in church, no.
matter what remonstrance was made by the
thermometer, or how surely they were deafened

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 177

to psalm and sermon by longing for the cool,
comfortable hats, which certain wise persons had
decided were too frivolous for the sanctuary.
New York girls have worn white cloth habits
at Lenox without shocking the moral sense of
the inhabitants, but Lenox, during the season,
probably contains a smaller percentage of sim-
pletons than any village in the United States,
and some daring Boston girls have appeared this
_ year in cool and elegant*habits of shepherd’s
check, and have pleased every good judge who
has seen them. If quite sure that you have as
much common sense and independence as these
young ladies, imitate them, but if not, wear the
regulation close, dark cloth habit throughout
the year, be uncomfortable, and lose half the
benefit of your summer rides from becoming
overheated, to say nothing of being unable to
“keep trotting” as long as you could if suitably
clothed for exercise. But might you not, if your
habit were thin, catch cold while your horse was
walking? You might if you tried, but probably
you would not be in a state so susceptible to
that disaster as you would if heavily dressed.
There is little danger that the temperature

178 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

will change so much during a three hours’ ride
that you cannot keep yourself sufficiently warm
for comfort and for safety, and if you start for
a longer excursion, you must use your common
sense. The best and least expensive way of
solving the difficulty is to have an ordinary
habit, with the waist and skirt separate, and
to wear a lighter coat, with a habit shirt, or
with a habit shirt and waistcoat, whenever some-
thing lighter is desirable. This plan gives three
changes of dress, which should be quite enough
for any reasonable girl.

But still, you do not know what color you
can wear? Black is suitable for all hours and
all places, even for an English fox hunt, although
the addition of a scarlet waistcoat, just visible
at the throat and below the waist, is desir-
able for the field. Dark blue, dark green, dark
brown are suitable for most occasions, and a
riding master whose experience has made him
acquainted with the dress worn in the principal
European capitals, declares his preference for
gray with a white waistcoat.

Among the habits shown by English tailors
at the French exhibition in 1889, was one of

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 179

blue gray, and a Paris tailor displayed a tan-
colored habit made with a coat and a waistcoat
revealing a white shirt front. London women
are now wearing white waistcoats and white
ties in the Park, both tie and waistcoat as stiff
and masculine as possible.

This affectation of adopting men’s dress, when
riding, is comparatively modern. Sir Walter
gives the date in “Rob Roy,” when Mr. Francis
Osbaldistone sees Diana for the first time and
notes that she wears a coat, vest and hat resem-
bling those of a man, ‘‘a mode introduced dur-
ing my absence in France,” he says, ‘and
perfectly new to me.” But this coat had the
collar and wide sharply pointed lapels and deep
cuffs now known as “ directoire,’’ and its skirts
were full, and so long that they touched the
right side of the saddle, and skirts, lapels, col-
lar and cuffs were trimmed with gold braid
almost an inch wide. The waistcoat, the vest,
as Sir Walter calls it, not knowing the risk that
he ran in this half century of being considered
as speaking American, had a smaller, but simi-
lar, collar and lapels, worn outside those of the
coat, and the “‘man’s tie”’ was of soft white mus- .

180 1N THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

lin, and a muslin sleeve and ruffles were visible
at the wrists. The hat was very broad brimmed,
and was worn set back from the forehead, and
bent into coquettish curves, and altogether the
fair Diana might depend upon having a very
long following of astonished gazers if she should
ride down Beacon Street or appear in Central
Park to-day.

Your habit shall not be like hers, Esmeralda,
but shall have a plain waist, made as long as
you can possibly wear it while sitting, slightly
pointed in front and curving upward at the side
to a point about half an inch below that where
the belt of your skirt fastens, and having a very
small and perfectly flat postilion, or the new
English round back. Elizabeth of Austria may
wear a princess habit, if it please her, but would
you, Esmeralda, be prepared, in order to have
your habit fit properly, to postpone buttoning
it until after you were placed in the saddle, as
she was accustomed to do in the happy days
when she could forget her imperial state in her
long wild gallops across the beautiful Irish hunt-
ing counties? The sleeves shall not be so tight
that you can feel them, nor shall the armholes

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 181

be so close as to prevent you from clasping your
hands above your head with your arms extended
at full length, and the waist shall be loose. If
you go toa tailor, Esmeralda, prepare yourself
to make a firm stand on this point. Warn him,
in as few words as possible, that you will not
take the habit out of his shop unless it suits
you, and do not allow yourself to be overawed by
the list of his patrons, all of whom “ wear their
habits far tighter, ma’am.’”’ Unless you can draw
a full, deep breath with your habit buttoned, you.
cannot do yourself or your teacher any credit in
trotting, and you will sometimes find yourself
compelled to give your escort the appearance of
being discourteous by drawing rein suddenly,
leaving him, unwarned, to trot on, apparently
disregarding your plight. Both your horse and
his will resent your action, and unless he resem-
ble both Moses and Job more strongly than most
Americans, he will have a few words to say in
regard to it, after you have repeated it once or
twice. And, lastly, Esmeralda, no riding master
with any sense of duty will allow you to wear
such a habit in his presence without telling you
his opinion of it, and stating his reasons for

182 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

objecting to it, and you best know whether or
not a little lecture of that sort will be agreeable,
especially if delivered in the presence of other
women. Warn your tailor of your determination,
then, and if his devotion to his ideal should com-
pel him in consequence to decline your patron-
age, go to another, until you find one who will
be content not to transform you into the like-
ness of a wooden dol]. Women are not made
to advertise tailors, whatever the tailors may
think.

What must you pay for your habit? You
may pay three hundred dollars, if you like,
although that price is seldom charged, unless to
customers who seem desirous of paying it, but
the usual scale runs downward from one hun-
dred and fifty dollars. This includes cloth and
all other materials, and finish as perfect within
as without, and is not dear, considering the retail
price of cloth, the careful making, and the touch
of style which only practised hands can give.
The heavy meltons worn for hunting habits
in England cost seven dollars a yard; English
tweeds which have come into vogue during
the last few years in London, cost six dollars ;

IN THE RIDIN @-SCH OOL. 183

broadcloth five dollars; rough, uncut cheviots,
about six dollars; and shepherds’ checks, single
width, about two dollars and a half. For waist-
coats, duck costs two dollars and a quarter a
yard, and fancy flannels and Tattersall checks
anywhere from one dollar and a half to two dol-
lars. The heavy cloths are the most economical
in the end, because they do not wear out where
the skirt is stretched over the pommel, the point
at which a light material is very soon in tatters.

The small, flat buttons cost twenty-five cents
a dozen; the fine black sateen used for linings
may be bought for thirty-five cents a yard, and
canvas for interlinings for twenty-five cents.
With these figures you may easily make your
own computations as to the cost of material, for
unless a woman is ‘‘more than common tall,”
two yards and a half will be more than enough
for her habit skirt, which should not rest an inch
on the ground on the left side when she stands,
and should be not more than a quarter of a yard
longer in its longest part. Two lengths, with
allowance for the hem two inches deep are needed
for the skirt, and when very heavy melton is used,
the edges are left raw, the perfect riding skirt in

184 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

modern eyes being that which shows no trace of
the needle, an end secured with lighter cloths
by pressing all the seams before hemming, and
then very lightly blind-stitching the pointed
edges in their proper place.

Strength is not desirable in the sewing of a
habit skirt. It is always possible that one may
be thrown, and the substantial stitching which
will hold one to pommel and stirrup may be
fatal to life. So hems are constructed to tear
away easily, and seams are run rather than
stitched, or stitched with fine silk, and the cloth
is not too firmly secured to the wide sateen
belt. The English safety skirts, invented three
or four years ago, have the seam on the knee-
gore open from the knee down to the edge, and
the two breadths are caught together with but-
tons and elastic loops, all sewed on very lightly
so as to give way easily. The effect of this
style of cutting is, if one be thrown, to trans-
form one into a flattered or libellous likeness
of Lilian Russell in her naval uniform, pre-
pared to scamper away from one’s horse, and
from any other creatures with eyes, but with
one’s bones unbroken and one’s face unscratched

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 185

by being dragged and pounded over the road,
or by being kicked.

For the waist and sleeves, Esmeralda, you
will allow as much as for those of your ordinary
frocks, and if you cannot find a fashionable
tailor who will consent to adapt himself to your
tastes and to your purse, you may be fortunate
enough to find men who have worked in shops,
but who now make habits at home, charging
twenty-five dollars for the work, and doing it
well and faithfully, although, of course, not
being able to keep themselves informed as to
the latest freaks of English fashion by foreign
_ travellers and correspondents, as their late em-
ployers do. There are two or three dressmak-
ers in Boston and five or six in New York
whose habits fit well, and are elegant in every
particular, and, if you can find an old-fashioned
tailoress who really knows her business, and
can prepare yourself to tell her about a few
special details, you may obtain a well-fitting
waist and skirt at a very reasonable price.

Of these details the first is that the sateen
lining should be black. Gay colors are very
pretty, but are soon spoiled by perspiration, and

186 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

white, the most fitting lining for a lady’s ordi-
nary frock, is unsuitable for a habit, since one
long, warm ride may convert it into something
very untidy of aspect. This lining, of which
all the seams should be turned toward the out-
side, should end at the belt line, and between it
and the cloth outside should be a layer of can-
vas, cut and shaped as carefully as possible,
and the whalebones, each in its covering, should
be sewed between the canvas and the sateen.
If a waistcoat be worn, it should have a double
sateen back with canvas interlining, and may be
high in the throat or made with a step collar
like that of the waist. The cuffs are simply in-
dicated by stitching and are buttoned on the
outside of the sleeve with two or three buttons.
Simulated waistcoats, basted firmly to the shoul-
der seams and under-arm seams of the waist,
and cut high to the throat with an officer collar,
are liked by ladies with a taste for variety, and
are not expensive, as but a small quantity of
material is required for each one. They are
fastened by small hooks except in those parts
shown by the openings, and on these flat or
globular pearl buttons are used.

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 187

When a step collar and a man’s tie are worn,
the ordinary high collar and chemisette, sold
for thirty-eight cents, takes the place of the
straight linen band worn with the habit high in
the throat, and the proper tie is the white silk
scarf fastened in a four-in-hand knot, and, if
you be wise, Esmeralda, you will buy this at a
good shop, and pay two dollars and a quarter for
it, rather than to pay less and repent ever after.
Some girls wear white lawn evening ties, but
they are really out of place in the saddle, in
which one is supposed to be in morning dress.
Wear the loosest of collars and cuffs, and fasten
_ the latter to your habit sleeves with safety pins.
The belts of your habit skirt and waist shouldalso
be pinned together at the back, at the sides and
in front, unless your tailor has fitted them with
hooks and eyes, and if you bea provident young
person, you will tuck away afew more safety
pins, a hairpin or two, half a row of “the com-
mon pin of North America,” and a quarter-ounce
flask of cologne, in one of the little leather
change pouches, and put it either in your habit
pocket or your saddle pocket. Sometimes, after
a dusty ride of an hour or two, a five-minute

188 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

halt under the trees by the roadside, gives op-
portunity to remove the dust from the face and
to cool the hands, and the cologne is much
better than the handkerchief “dipped in the
pellucid waters of a rippling brook,” @ Za novel-
ist, for the pellucid brook of Massachusetts is
very likely to run past a leather factory, in
which case its waters are anything but agree-
able. Whether or not your habit shall have a
pocket is a matter of choice. If it have one, it
should be small and should be on the left side,
just beyond the three flat buttons which fasten
the front breadth and side breadth of your habit
together at the waist. When thus placed, you
can easily reach it with either hand.

Fitting the habit over the knee is a feat not
to be effected by an amateur without a pattern,
and the proper slope and adjustment of the
breadths come by art, not chance; but Har-
per’s Bazar patterns are easily obtained by mail.
The best tailors adjust the skirt while the wearer
sits on a side saddle, and there is no really good
substitute for this, for, although one may guess
fairly well at the fit of the knee, nothing but
actual trial will show whether or not, when in

_IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 189

the saddle, the left side of the skirt hangs per-
fectly straight, concealing the right side, and
leaving the horse’s body visible below it. When
your skirt is finished, no matter if it be made
by the very best of tailors, wear it once in the
school before you appear on the road in it, and,
looking in the mirror, view it “with a cricket’s
eye,’ as the little boy said when he appeared on
the school platform as an example of the advan-
tages of the wonderful merits of oral instruc-
tion.

An elastic strap about a quarter of a yard
long should be sewed half way between the
curved knee seam and the hem, and should be
slipped over the right toe before mounting, and
a second strap, for the left heel, should be sewed
on the last seam on the under side of the habit,
to be adjusted after the foot is placed in the
stirrup. The result of this cutting and arrange-
ment is the straight, simple, modern habit
which is so great a change from the riding dress
of half a century ago, with its full skirt which
nearly swept the ground. The short skirt first
appears in the English novel in ‘‘ Guy Living-
stone,” and is worn by the severe and upright

190 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

Lady Alice, the dame who hesitated not to
snub Florence Bellasis, when snubbing was
needful, and who was a mighty huntress. Now
everybody wears it, and the full skirts are seen
nowhere except in the riding-school dressing-
rooms, where they yet linger. because they may
be worn by anybody, whereas the plain skirt fits
but one person. It seems odd that so many
years were required to discover that a short
skirt, held in place by a strap placed over the
right toe and another slipped over the left heel,
really protected the feet more than yards of
loosely floating cloth, but did not steam and
electricity wait for centuries? Since the new
style was generally adopted, Englishwomen allow
themselves the luxury of five or six habits, in-
stead of the one or two formerly considered
sufficient, but each one is worn for several years.
When the extravagant wife, in Mrs. Alexander’s
“A Crooked Path,” suggests that she may soon
want a new habit, her husband asks indignantly,
“Did I not give you one two years ago?’’

The trousers may match the habit or may be
of stockinet, or the imported cashmere tights
may be worn. Women who are not fat and

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 191
ene a ar oe
whose muscles are hard, may choose whichso-
ever one of these pleases them, but fat women,
and women whose flesh is not too solid, must
wear thick trousers, and would better have
them lined with buckskin, unless they would be
transformed into what Sairey would call “a
mask of bruiges,” and would frequent remark to
Mrs. Harris that such was what she expected.
Trousers with gaiter fastenings below the knee
are preferred by some women who put not their
faith in straps alone, and knee-breeches are
liked by some, but to wear knee-breeches means
to pay fifteen dollars for long riding-boots, in-
stead of the modest seven or eight dollars
which suffice to buy ordinary Balmoral boots.
Gaiters must button on theleft side of each
leg, and trouser straps may be sewed on one
side and buttoned on the other, instead of being
buttoned on both sides as men’s are. Tailors
sometimes insist on two buttons, but asa woman
does not wear her trousers except with the strap,
it is difficult to see why she needs to be able to
remove it. The best material for the strap is
thick soft kid, or thin leather lined with cloth.
The thick, rubber strap used by some tailors is

192 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

dangerous, sometimes preventing the rider from
placing her foot in the stirrup, sometimes mak-
ing her lose it at a critical moment. Whether
breeches, tights or trousers are worn, they must
be loose at the knee, or trotting will be impossi-
ble, and the rider will feel as if bound to the
second pommel, and will sometimes be unable
to rise at all.

As to gloves, the choice lies between the
warm antelope skin mousquetaires at two dollars
a pair, and the tan-colored kid gauntlets at the
same price. The former are most comfortable
for winter, the latter for summer, and neither
can be too large. Nobody was ever ordered out
for execution for wearing black gloves, although
they are unusual, and now and then one sees a
woman, whose soul is set on novelty, gorgeous
in yellow cavalry gauntlets, or even with white
dragoon gauntlets, making her look like a badly
focused photograph.

Lastly, as to the hat. What shall it be,
Esmeralda?

No tuft of grass-green plumes for you, like
Queen Guinevere’s, nor yet the free flowing
feather to be seen in so many beautiful old

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 193

French pictures, nor the plumed hat which “my
sweet Mistress Ann Dacre” wore when Con-
stance Sherwood’s loving eyes first fell upon
her, but the simple jockey cap, exactly match-
ing your habit, and costing two dollars and a
half or three dollars; the Derby cap for the
same price or a little more; or, best of all, the
English or the American silk hat, as universally
suitable asa black silk frock was in the good
old times when Mrs. Rutherford Birchard Hayes
was in the White House. The English Henry
Heath hat at seven or eight dollars, with its
velvet forehead piece and its band of soft, rough
silk, stays in place better than any other, but it
is too heavy for comfort. If you can have an
American hatter remodel it, making it weigh
half a pound less, it will be perfection, always
provided that he does not, as he assuredly will
unless you forbid it, throw away the soft, rough
band, which keeps the hat in place, and substi-
tute one of the American smooth bands, designed
to slip off without ruffling the hair, and doing
it instantly, the moment that a breeze touches
the brim of the hat. A hunting guard, fastened
at the back of the hat brim and between two

194 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

habit buttons is better than an elastic caught
under the braids of your hair, for when an elastic
does not snap outright, it is always trying to do
so, and in the effort holds the hat so tightly on
the head as sometimes to give actual pain. The
hunting guard is no restraint at all unless the
hat flies off, in which case it keeps it from fol-
lowing the example of John Gilpin’s, but with
the Henry Heath lining, your hat is perfectly
secure in anything from a Texas Norther toa
New England east wind. If you follow London
example, and wear a straw hat for morning rides,
sew a piece of white velvet on the inner side of
the band, and your forehead will not be marked.

Arrayed after these suggestions, Esmeralda,
you will be inconspicuous, and that is the gen-
eral aim of the true lady’s riding dress, with the
exception of those worn by German princesses,
when, at a review, they lead the regiments
which they command. Then, their habits may
be frogged and braided with gold, or they may
fire the air in habit and hat of white and scarlet,
the regimental colors, as the Empress of Ger-
many did the other day. If you were sure of
riding as these royal ladies do, perhaps even

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 195

white and scarlet might be permitted to you,
but can you fancy yourself, Esmeralda, sweep-
ing across a parade ground with a thousand
horsemen behind you, and ready to salute your
sovereign and commander-in-chief at the right
moment, and to go forward with as much pre-
cision as if you, too, were one of those magnifi-
cently drilled machines brought into being by
the man of blood and iron?

196 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

XIII.

’Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery’s the food of fools.
Swift.

yor American children and American
girls were the angels which their
mothers and their lovers tell them
that they are, the best possible rid-
ing master for them would be an American sol-
dier who had learned and had taught riding at
West Point. Being of the same race, pupil and
teacher would have that vast fund of common
memories, hopes and feelings; that common
knowledge of character, of good qualities and
of defects, and that ability to divine motives
and to predict action which constitute perfect
sympathy, and their relations to one another
would be mutually agreeable and profitable.
Unfortunately, Esmeralda, you, like possibly
some other American girls, are not an angel,
and if you were, you could not have such a

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 197

riding master, because the very few men who
have the specified qualifications are too well ac-
quainted with the characteristics of their coun-
trywomen to think of undertaking to instruct
them in the equestrian art. Who, then, shall
be his substitute? Clearly, either a person suf-
ficiently patient and clever to neutralize the
faults of American women, or one capable of
adapting himself to them, of eluding them, and
of forcing a certain quantity of knowledge upon
his pupils, almost in spite of themselves. The
former is hardly to be found among natives
of the United States; the latter can be found
nowhere else, except, possibly, in certain Eng-
lish shires in which the inhabitants so closely
resemble the average American that when they
immigrate hither they are scarcely distinguish-
able from men whose ancestors came two or
three centuries ago. :
_ A foreign teacher, whether French, German
or Hungarian, always regards himself in the just
and proper European manner as the superior of
his pupil. The traditions in which he has been
reared, under which he has been instructed, not
only in riding, but in all other matters, survive

198 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

from the time when all learning was received.
from men whose title to respect rested not only
on their wisdom but on their ecclesiastical office,
and who expected and received as much defer-
ence from their pupils as from their congrega-
tions. Undeniably, thereare unruly children in
European schools, but their rebelliousness is
never encouraged, and their teachers are ex-
pected to quell it, not to submit to it, much less
to endeavor to avoid it by giving no commands
which are distasteful. Even in the worst con-
ducted private schools on the continent, there
is always at least one master who must be
obeyed, whose authority is held as beyond ap-
peal, and in the school conducted either by the
church or by civil authority, the duty of enforc-
ing perfect discipline is regarded as quite as
imperative as that of demanding well-learned
lessons.

Passing through these institutions, the young
European enters the military school with as lit-
tle thought of disputing any order which may
be given him as of arguing with the priest who
states a theological truth from the pulpit. And,
indeed, had he been reared under the tutelage

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 199

of one of those modern silver-tongued American
pedagogues, who make gentle requests lest they
should elicit antagonism by commands, the mili-
tary school would soon completely alter the com-
plexion of his ideas, for he would find his failures
in the execution of orders treated as disobedi-
ence. He would not be punished at first, it is
true, but pretty theories that he was nervous,
or ill, or the victim of hereditary disability, or
of fibre too delicately attenuated to perform any
required act, would not be admitted except, in-
deed, as a reason for expulsion. Moreover, the
tests to which he would be compelled to submit
_ before this escape from discipline lay open to
him, would be neither slight nor easily borne, for
the European military teacher has yet to learn
the existence of that exquisite personal dignity
which is hopelessly blighted by corporal pun-
ishment for infractions of discipline.

“Will you teach me to ride, sir?”’ asked a
Boston man of an Hungarian soldier, one of the
pioneers among Boston instructors.

“WillIl teach you! Eh! I don’t know,” said
the exile dolefully, for during his few weeks in
the city, he had seen something of the ways of

200 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

the American who fancies himself desirous of
being taught. ‘Perhaps you will learn, but will
—I—teach —you? Youcan ride?”

“A little.”

“Very well! Mount that horse, and ride
around the ring.”

_. Away went the pupil, doing his best, but be-
fore he had traversed two sides of the school,
the master shouted to the horse, and the pupil
was sitting in the tan. He picked himself up,
and returned to the mounting-stand, saying:
‘Will you tell me how to stay on next time ?”’

“JT will,” cried the Hungarian in a small
ecstasy; “and I will make a rider of you!”
And he did, too, and certainly took as much
pleasure as his pupil in the long course of
instruction which followed, and in the resultant
proficiency.

In European riding-schools for ladies, there
is, of course, no resort to corporal punishment,
but there is none of that careful abstention from
telling disagreeable truths which popular igno-
rance exacts from American teachers in all
schools, except in the military and naval acade-
mies. Indeed, the need of it is hardly felt, for

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 201

that peculiar self-consciousness which makes an
American awkward under observation and res-
tive under reproof is scarcely found in countries
not democratic, and the “I’m ez good ez you
be”’ feeling which is at the bottom of American
intractability, has no chance to flourish in lands
where position is a matter of birth and not of
self-assertion.

A French woman, compelled to make part of
her toilet in a railway waiting-room under the
eyes of half a score of enemies, that is to say, of
ten other women, arranges her tresses, purchased
or natural, uses powder-puff and hare’s foot if
she choose, and turns away from the mirror
armed for conquest ; but an American similarly
situated, forgets half her hair-pins, does not
dare to wash her face carefully lest some one
should sniff condemnation of her fussiness, and
looks worse after her efforts at beautifying. A
French girl, told that her English accent is bad,
corrects it carefully; an American, gently re-
minded that a French “u’”’ is not pronounced
like “ you,’ changes it to “oo,” and stares de-
fiance at Bécher and all his works. And even
that commendable reserve which hinders well-

202 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

bred Americans from frank self-discussion,
stands in the way of perfect sympathy between
him and the European master, representative
of races in which everybody, from an emperor
in his proclamations to the peasant chatting
over his beer or petzt vin, may discourse upon
his own most recondite peculiarities.

For all these reasons, the European riding
master is often misunderstood, even by his
older pupils, and young girls almost invariably
mistake his patient reiteration and his method-
ical vivacity for anger, so that his classes
seldom contain any pupils not really anxious to
learn, or whose parents are not determined that
they shall learn in his school and in no other.
Teaching is a matter of strict conscience with
him, and even after years of experience, and in
spite of more than one severe lesson as to
American sensitiveness, he continues to speak
the truth. Even when his pupils have become
what the ordinary observer calls perfect riders,
he allows no fault to go unreproved, although
nobody can more thoroughly enjoy the evening
classes, organized by fairly good riders rather
for amusement than for instruction. If you

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 203

think you can endure perfect discipline and
incessant plain speaking go to him, Esmeralda.

If you cannot, take the other alternative, the
American or the English master, but remember
that it is only by absolute submission that you
will obtain the best instruction which he is ca-
pable of giving. If you do not compel him to
tax his mind with remembering all your foibles
and weaknesses, you may, thanks to race sym-
pathy, learn more rapidly at first from him than
from a foreigner, and, unless you are rude and
insubordinate to the point of insolence, you
may depend upon receiving no actual harshness
_ from him, although he will refuse to flatter you,
and will repeat his warnings against faults,
quite as persistently as any foreigner.

A very little observation of your fellow pupils
will show you that presumption upon his good
nature is wofully common, and that his Ameri-
can inability to forget that a woman is a woman,
even when she conducts herself as if her name
were Ursa or Jenny, often subjects him to stu-
pendous impertinence, which he receives with
calm and silent contempt. You will find that
his instruction follows the same lines as that of

204 IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL.

all foreign masters in the United States, for
there is no American system of horsemanship,
the traditions of the army, and of the north,
being derived from France, those of the south
from England, and those of the southwest from
Spain, by the way of Mexico and Texas,
Under his instruction, you will remain longer in
the debatable land between perfect ignorance
of horsemanship, and being a really accom-
plished rider, than you would if taught by a
foreigner, but, as has already been said, you
will learn more rapidly at first, and the result,
if you choose to work hard, will be much the
same.

Should you, by way of experiment, choose to
take lessons from both native and foreign mas-
ters, you will find each frankly ready to admit
the merits of the other, and to acknowledge
that he himself is better suited to some pupils
than to others and, to come back to what was
told you at the outset, you will find them unan-
imous in assuring you that your best teacher,
the instructor without whose aid you can learn
nothing, is yourself, your slightly rebellious, but
withal clever, American self. You can learn,

IN THE RIDING-SCHOOL. 205

Esmeralda. There is no field of knowledge
into which the American woman has attempted
to enter, in which she has not demonstrated
her ability to compete, when she chooses to put
forth all her energy, with her sisters of other
nations, but she must work, and must work
steadily. There are American teachers of
grammar who cannot parse; American female
journalists who cannot write ; American women
calling themselyes doctors, but unable to make
a diagnosis between the cholera and the
measles ; and American women practising law
and dependent for a living on blatant self-adver-
tising, but with the faculties of Vassar and
Wellesley in existence ; with the editor of Har-
pers Bazar receiving the same salary as Mr.
Curtis ; with American women acknowledged
as a credit to the medical and to the legal pro-
fession — what of it? The American woman
can learn anything, can do anything. Do you
learn to ride, and, Waving done it; “keep
riding.’ At present you have received just
sufficient instruction to qualify you to ride
properly escorted, on good roads, but —
“Keep Ripine!”

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