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+Project Gutenberg's Patroclus and Penelope, by Theodore Ayrault Dodge
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Patroclus and Penelope
+       A Chat in the Saddle
+
+Author: Theodore Ayrault Dodge
+
+Release Date: March 24, 2012 [EBook #39244]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PATROCLUS AND PENELOPE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+By the same Author.
+
+
+_THE CAMPAIGN OF CHANCELLORSVILLE._
+
+It is not easy to say which part of this book is best, for it is all
+good.--_The Nation._
+
+We do not hesitate to pronounce it one of the ablest, fairest, and
+most valuable books that we have seen.--_Southern Historical Papers._
+
+
+_A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF OUR CIVIL WAR_
+
+Is all that could be desired: gives perhaps a clearer, more
+vivid view, a more accurate outline than any other available
+record.--_London Saturday Review._
+
+The material of the work well serves to consolidate and orient the
+knowledge of what was done in the Great Rebellion and of those who did
+it.--_Journal Military Service Institution._
+
+We do not hesitate to commend the book most warmly as the work of an
+able, painstaking soldier, who has honestly endeavored to ascertain
+and frankly to tell the truth about the war.--_Southern Historical
+Papers._
+
+The book is written in a spirit of impartiality and of just
+discrimination concerning the merits and defects of the generals who
+led the armies of the North and South.--_Army and Navy Journal._
+
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE I.
+   PATROCLUS.]
+
+
+
+PATROCLUS AND PENELOPE
+
+_A Chat in the Saddle_
+
+
+BY
+
+THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE
+
+BREVET LIEUTENANT-COLONEL UNITED STATES ARMY, RETIRED LIST; AUTHOR OF
+"THE CAMPAIGN OF CHANCELLORSVILLE," "A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF OUR CIVIL
+WAR," ETC., ETC.
+
+
+BOSTON
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+1885
+
+Copyright, 1885,
+BY THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE.
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+_The Riverside Press, Cambridge_:
+Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.
+
+
+To
+
+THE COUNTRY CLUB OF BOSTON,
+
+WHICH HAS FOSTERED A TRUE APPRECIATION OF GOOD HORSEMANSHIP IN OUR
+CITY OF BEAUTIFUL ENVIRONMENTS, AND WHOSE GENEROUS AND ABLE
+ADMINISTRATION HAS AFFORDED THE LOVERS OF THE SADDLE SO MANY
+OCCASIONS OF RARE ENTERTAINMENT,
+
+These Pages are Inscribed
+
+BY
+
+A MEMBER.
+
+
+_Since--as it has been our fortune to be long engaged about horses--we
+consider that we have acquired some knowledge of horsemanship, we
+desire also to intimate to the younger part of our friends how we
+think that they may bestow their attention on horses to the best
+advantage._
+
+XENOPHON on Horsemanship, I. I.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents have been moved from the back of
+the book to the front.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                    PAGE
+
+     I. Patroclus and I                               19
+
+    II. Saddles and Seats                             22
+
+   III. Patroclus on a Rack                           28
+
+    IV. The Rack and Single-Foot                      29
+
+     V. Patroclus Trotting                            32
+
+    VI. Thoroughbred or Half-Bred                     33
+
+   VII. The Saddle Mania                              35
+
+  VIII. Park-Riding                                   37
+
+    IX. A Fine Horse not necessarily a Good Hack      39
+
+     X. Soldiers have Stout Seats                     41
+
+    XI. A Gate and a Brook                            44
+
+   XII. The Old Trooper                               48
+
+  XIII. Instruction in Riding                         49
+
+   XIV. Chilly Fox-Hunting                            51
+
+    XV. Is Soldier or Fox-Hunter the Better Rider?    55
+
+   XVI. The School-Rider                              56
+
+  XVII. Patroclus happy                               59
+
+ XVIII. Photography versus Art                        61
+
+   XIX. A One-Man Horse                               69
+
+    XX. Baucher's Favorite Saddle Horse               70
+
+   XXI. Patroclus sniffs a Friend                     73
+
+  XXII. Riding-Schools and School-Riding              74
+
+ XXIII. Is Schooling of Value?                        76
+
+  XXIV. Manuals of Training                           82
+
+   XXV. Result of Training                            83
+
+  XXVI. Qualities of the Horse                        86
+
+  XXVII. Dress, Saddles, and Bridles                  87
+
+ XXVIII. Mounting                                     89
+
+   XXIX. How to hold the Reins                        92
+
+    XXX. How to begin Training                        94
+
+   XXXI. Penelope's Unrestrained Courage              97
+
+  XXXII. Hints before beginning to train a Horse      98
+
+ XXXIII. Guiding by the Neck                         104
+
+  XXXIV. What an Arched Neck means                   109
+
+   XXXV. Flexions of the Neck                        113
+
+  XXXVI. Flexions of the Croup                       116
+
+ XXXVII. The Canter                                  121
+
+XXXVIII. Leading with either Shoulder                125
+
+  XXXIX. The Horse's Natural Lead                    131
+
+     XL. The Best Way to teach the Lead              135
+
+    XLI. Change of Lead in Motion                    138
+
+   XLII. Suggestions                                 141
+
+  XLIII. How to begin Jumping                        143
+
+   XLIV. The Reins in the Jump                       148
+
+    XLV. Odds and Ends of Leaping                    152
+
+   XLVI. Hunting and Road-Riding                     155
+
+  XLVII. Advantages of True Rack                     157
+
+ XLVIII. Who is the Best Rider?                      160
+
+   XLIX. Vale!                                       166
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+ 1. PATROCLUS                             _Frontispiece._
+
+ 2. A QUIET AMBLE                                     12
+
+ 3. THE RACK OR RUNNING WALK                          24
+
+ 4. A SHARP SINGLE-FOOT                               36
+
+ 5. AN EASY CANTER                                    48
+
+ 6. A TEN-MILE TROT                                   60
+
+ 7. RISING TO A HURDLE                                72
+
+ 8. FLYING A HURDLE                                   84
+
+ 9. CLEAN ABOVE IT                                    96
+
+10. TAKING OFF AT WATER                              108
+
+11. DOING IT HANDILY                                 120
+
+12. A TWENTY-FOOT JUMP                               132
+
+13. ABOUT TO LAND                                    144
+
+14. LANDING                                          156
+
+
+
+
+BEFORE MOUNTING.
+
+
+But a few months since, the author, whose thirty odd years in the
+saddle in many parts of the world have, he trusts, taught him that
+modesty which should always be bred of usage, was showing some of
+the instantaneous photographs of his horse Patroclus to a group of
+Club men. Most of the gentlemen were old friends, but one of the
+photographs having been passed to a by-stander, whose attire marked
+him as belonging to the most recently developed Boston type of
+horsemen, elicited, much to his listeners' entertainment, the remark
+that "naw man can wide in a saddle like that, ye know, not weally
+wide, ye know! naw _fawm_, ye know! wouldn't be tolewated in our
+school, ye know!" The author was informed by a mutual acquaintance
+that the gentleman was taking a course of lessons at the swellest
+riding academy of the city, and had recently imported an English
+gelding. In deference to such excellent authority, whose not unkindly
+meant, if somewhat brusquely uttered, criticism may be said to have
+inspired these pages, otherwise perhaps without a suitable _motif_,
+an explanation appears to be called for, lest by some other youthful
+equestrian critics the physician be advised to heal himself.
+
+The exclusive use of the English hunting-rig and crop for all kinds
+and conditions of men at all times and in all places is well
+understood by old horsemen to be but a matter of fashion which time
+may displace in favor of some other novelty. For their proper purpose
+they are undeniably the best. But to the newly fledged equestrian who
+makes them his shibboleth, and who discards as "bad form" any
+variation upon the road from what is eminently in place after hounds,
+the author, with an admiration for the excellencies of the English
+seat derived from half a dozen years' residence in the Old Country and
+many a sharp run in the flying-counties, and with the consciousness
+that, if tried in the balance of to-day's Anglomania, his own seat, as
+shown in some of the illustrations, may chance to be found wanting,
+desires to explain that, during the Civil War, outrageous fortune,
+among other slings and arrows, sent him to the rear with the loss of a
+leg; but that far from giving up a habit thus become all the more
+essential because he could no longer safely sit a flat saddle, he
+concluded to supplement his lack of grip (as the Marquis of Anglesea
+for a similar reason had done before him) by the artificial support
+which is afforded in the rolls and pads of a somerset or demi-pique,
+as well as to adopt the seat best suited to his disability. And it was
+such a saddle, of a pattern perhaps too pronounced to suit even the
+author's eye, however comfortable and safe,--particularly so in
+leaping, which provoked the censure, perhaps quite justifiable
+according to the light of the critic, which has been quoted above.
+This variation, however, by no means conflicts with the author's
+belief in, and constant advocacy of, the flat English saddle _in its
+place_. But he has seen so many accomplished riders in quite different
+saddles, that he became long ago convinced that the English tree by no
+means affords the only perfect seat. In fact, the saddle best suited
+to universal use, that is, the one which might best serve a man under
+any conditions, approaches, in his opinion, more nearly the modified
+military saddle of to-day than the hunting type.
+
+Nor because a local fashion, set but yesterday, prescribes strict
+adherence to a style he cannot follow, is the author less ready to
+venture upon giving a friendly word of advice to many of our young and
+aspiring riders. There are not a few gentlemen in Boston, whose months
+in the saddle number far less than the author's years, to whose
+courage and discretion as horsemen he yields his very honest
+admiration, and whose stanch hunters he is happy to follow across
+country, nor ashamed if he finds he has lost them from sight. He
+regrets to say that he has also seen not a few who affect to sneer at
+a padded saddle or a horse with a long tail, who seem incapable of
+throwing their heart across a thirty inch stone wall in a burst after
+hounds, although upon the road they seek to impress one as constantly
+riding to cover.
+
+It is unnecessary, however, to say that the author has too long been a
+lover of equestrianism _per se_ not to admire the good and be tolerant
+of the bad for the total sum of gain which the horseback mania of
+to-day affords. He is old enough to remember that human nature remains
+the same, however fast the world may move, and is firm in the belief
+that we shall soon grow to be a nation of excellent horsemen.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE II.
+   A QUIET AMBLE.]
+
+There is no pretense to make these pages a new manual for horse-training
+or for riding. There are plenty of good books on horsemanship now in
+print; but unfortunately there are few riders who care for anything
+beyond a superficial education of either their horses or themselves.
+More than rudimentary--if viewed in the light of the High School--the
+hints in this volume can scarcely be considered. If any incentive to
+the study of the real art and to the better training of saddle beasts
+is given, all that these pages deserve will have been gained.
+
+The plates are phototype reproductions from photographs of Patroclus,
+taken in action by Baldwin Coolidge. Their origin lay in the belief
+that a fine-gaited horse could be instantaneously photographed, and
+still show the agreeable action which all horse-lovers admire, and
+have been habituated to see drawn by artists, instead of the ungainly
+positions usually resulting from the instantaneous process. The object
+aimed at--to show an anatomically correct and artistically acceptable
+horse in each case--has, it is thought, been gained, so far, at least,
+as motion arrested can ever give the idea of motion.
+
+Out of thirty photographs taken, the fourteen herein given, and one or
+two others, much resembling some of these, showed an agreeable action.
+The best positions of the horse were often the poorest photographs. In
+enlarging them by solar prints for the phototype process, the shadows
+of the horse have been darkened, or in some instances, where a
+negative has been blurred or injured, an indistinct line has been
+strengthened. In some plates the photograph was so clear (as Plates
+IV. and V.) that no darkening of the shadows was necessary. In others
+(as Plates VII. and VIII.) the negative, though showing excellent
+position, was so weak as to require a good deal of treatment. But in
+even the most indistinct ones the outline and crude shadows were
+clearly shown by the negatives, and followed absolutely in treating
+the solar prints. The plates are thus obtained intact from the
+original instantaneous negatives, and faithfully represent the action
+and spirit of the horse. The jumping pictures were taken against the
+natural background, the others against a screen or building. In the
+latter, the entire background has been made white, for greater
+distinctness. The water-jump was in reality a dry ditch of eleven feet
+wide from bar to bank. But being hidden in the original negatives by
+the heaps of earth thrown up in digging it, and several of the
+negatives being blurred in the foreground, the water was added in the
+solar prints. To preserve anatomical accuracy, the finer results of
+both photography and of the phototype process have had to be
+sacrificed.
+
+To state that the author has often witnessed the prize leaping at the
+Agricultural Hall Horse Show in London, as well as watched the contest
+of many a noted English steeple-chase, will absolve him from any
+suspicion of parading these photographs as examples of excellent
+performance. They were all taken in cold blood on one occasion, and
+Patroclus was ridden alone over the obstacles at least a dozen times
+for each good picture secured. Every horseman knows that this is a
+pretty sound test of a willing jumper, if not a crack one. Moreover,
+the author has been acquainted with too many masters of equitation, at
+home as well as abroad, to harbor any but a very modest opinion of his
+own equestrian ability. He would be much more sensitive to criticism
+of Patroclus than of himself, for he knows the horse to be an
+exceptionally good one within his limitations, while always conscious
+that his own seat lacks the firmness of ante-bellum days. It used to
+be said in the Old Country that an Englishman keeps his seat to manage
+his horse, and that a Frenchman manages his horse to keep his seat.
+The author is obliged to confess that to-day he is often reduced to
+the latter practice.
+
+The hurdles were somewhat over four feet high; behind each was a bar
+just four feet from the ground. The water-jumps were from fifteen to
+eighteen feet from taking-off to landing. On a number of occasions (as
+in Plate XII.) Patroclus covered over twenty measured feet in this
+jump.
+
+As is manifest from a few of the plates, it was the action of the
+horse, and not the "form" of the rider, which it was aimed to secure.
+It is easy to make engravings in which the seat of the rider shall be
+perfect; but in all the wood-cut illustrations of books on equitation
+the horse is usually anatomically incorrect, however artistically
+suggestive. One never sees the photograph of a horse clearing an
+obstacle in which the rider's form is as perfect as it is apt to
+be depicted in engravings or paintings. And in some of the within
+illustrations of road gaits there is apparent a carelessness in both
+seat and reins which would scarcely do in the accomplishment of the
+high airs of the _manege_, but into which a rider is sometimes apt
+unconsciously to lapse. No one is probably better aware of what is
+good and bad alike in these plates than the author himself. He
+appreciates "form" at its exact value, but is constrained to believe
+that the true article comes from sources far removed from, and of
+vastly more solid worth than the pigskin which covers a rider's
+saddle, or the shears which bang his horse's tail. The searching power
+of photography, however, is no respecter of form or person.
+
+A word of thanks should not be omitted to Mr. Coolidge, whose
+excellent judgment and keen eye in taking these pictures, without
+other apparatus than his lens, is well shown by the result, nor to the
+Lewis Engraving Company for their careful reproductions from material
+by no means perfect.
+
+Perhaps it should be said that Master Tom and Penelope, who figure in
+these pages, are as really in the flesh as Patroclus, and by no means
+mere fictions of the imagination.
+
+There is no instruction pretended to be conveyed by these plates, as
+there is in the similarly obtained illustrations of Anderson's
+excellent "Modern Horsemanship." Their purpose is less to point a
+moral than to adorn a tale. But an apology to all is perhaps due for
+the very chatty manner in which the author has taken his friend, the
+reader, into his confidence, and to experienced horsemen for the very
+elementary hints sometimes given. The pages devoted to Penelope are
+meant for young riders who, like Master Tom, really want to learn.
+
+THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE.
+
+BROOKLINE, MASS., _April, 1885_.
+
+
+
+
+PATROCLUS AND PENELOPE.
+
+A CHAT IN THE SADDLE.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+We are fast friends, Patroclus, and many's the hour since, five years
+ago, I bought you, an impetuous but good-tempered and intelligent
+three-year-old colt, whom every one thought too flighty to be of much
+account, that you and I have spent in each other's company upon the
+pretty suburban roads of Boston. And many's the scamper and frolic
+that we've had across the fields, and many's the quiet stroll through
+the shady woods! For you and I, Patroclus, can go where it takes a
+goodish horse to follow in our wake. I wonder, as I look into your
+broad and handsome face, whether you know and love me as well as I do
+you. Indeed, when you whinny at my distant step, or rub your
+inquisitive old nose against my hands or towards my pocket, begging
+for another handful of oats or for a taste of salt or sugar; or when
+you confidingly lower your head to have me rub your ears, with so much
+restful intelligence beaming from your soft, brown eyes, and such
+evident liking for my company, I think you know how warm my heart
+beats for you. And how generous the blood which courses through your
+own tense veins your master knows full well. If I had to flee for my
+life, Patroclus, I should wish that your mighty back, tough thews, and
+noble courage could bear me through the struggle. For I never called
+upon you yet, but what there came the response which only the truest
+of your race can give.
+
+No, Pat! you've got all the sugar you can have to-day. My pockets are
+not a grocer's shop. Stand quiet while I mount, and you and I will
+take our usual stroll.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Patroclus is said to have been sired in the Old Country out of a
+cavalry mare brought over by an English officer to Quebec, and there
+foaled in Her Majesty's service. Even this much I had on hearsay. But
+he has the instincts of the charger in every fibre,--and perhaps the
+most intelligent and best saddle beasts among civilized nations belong
+to mounted troops. As old Hiram Woodruff used to say, Patroclus makes
+his own pedigree. I know what he is; I care not whence he came.
+
+No need to extol your points. Though there be those of higher lineage,
+and many a speedier horse upon the turf, or perchance a grander
+performer after hounds, thrice your value to whoso will find fault or
+blemish upon you, my Patroclus! You are blood-bay and glossy as a
+satin kerchief. You are near sixteen hands; short coupled enough to
+carry weight, and long enough below to take an ample stride. You tread
+as light as a steel watch-spring quivers. A woman's face has rarely a
+sweeter or more trusting look than yours in repose; a falcon's eye is
+no keener when aroused. You will follow me like a dog, and your little
+mistresses can fondle you in stall or paddock. You have all the life
+and endurance of the thoroughbred, the intelligence of the Arab, the
+perfect manners of the park, and the power and discretion of a Midland
+Counties hunter. Like the old song, you have
+
+    "A head like a snake, and a skin like a mouse,
+      An eye like a woman, bright, gentle, and brown;
+    With loins and a back that would carry a house,
+      And quarters to lift you smack over a town."
+
+May it be many a year yet, Patroclus, before I must pension you off
+for good!
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+You stand for me to mount as steady as a rock. And you know your
+crippled master's needs so well that you would do it in the whirl of a
+stampede. I will leave the reins upon your neck and let you walk
+whither your own fancy dictates, for I am lazily inclined; though
+indeed I know from your tossing head that you fain would go a livelier
+gait. So long as you can walk your four full miles an hour, you will
+have to curb your ardor for many a long stretch, while your master
+chews the cud of sweet and bitter fancies.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+As we saunter along, the reflections bred of thirty odd years in the
+saddle come crowding up. From a Shelty with a scratch-pack in Surrey a
+generation since, to many a cavalry charge with bugle-clash and
+thundering tread on Old Dominion soil now twenty years ago, the daily
+life with that best of friends,--save always one,--the perfect saddle
+horse, brings many thoughts to mind. What if we jot them down?
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The most common delusion under which the average equestrian is apt to
+labor in every part of the world is that his own style of riding
+is the one _par excellence_. Whether the steeple-chaser on his
+thoroughbred, or the Indian on his mustang is the better rider, cannot
+well be decided. The peculiar horsemanship of every country has its
+manifest advantages, and is the natural outgrowth of, as well as
+peculiarly adapted to, the climate, roads, and uses to which the horse
+is put. The cowboy who can defy the bucking broncho will be unseated
+by a two-year-old which any racing-stable boy can stick to, while this
+same boy would hardly sit the third stiff boost of the ragged,
+grass-fed pony. The best horseman of the desert would be nowhere in
+the hunting-field. The cavalry-man who, with a few of his fellows, can
+carve his way through a column of infantry, may not be able to compete
+at polo with a Newport swell. The jockey who will ride over five and a
+half feet of timber or twenty feet of water would make sorry work in
+pulling down a lassoed steer. Each one in his element is by far the
+superior of the other, but none of these is just the type of horseman
+whom the denizen of our busy cities, for his daily enjoyment, cares to
+make his pattern.
+
+The original barbarian, no doubt, clasped his undersized mount with
+all the legs he had, as every natural rider does to-day. When saddle
+and stirrups came into use, followed anon by spurs, discretion soon
+taught the grip with knee and thigh alone, the heels being kept for
+other purposes than support. It must, however, be set down to the
+credit of the original barbarian that he probably did not ride in the
+style known as "tongs on a wall." This certainly not admirable seat
+originated with the knight in heavy armor, and has since been adhered
+to by many nations, and, through the Spaniards, has found its way to
+every part of the Americas. But as a rule, wild riders have the bent
+knee which gives the firmest bareback seat. The long stirrup and high
+cantle must not be condemned for certain purposes. When not carried to
+the furthest extreme they have decided advantages. It is by no means
+sure that any other seat would be equally easy on the cantering
+mustang for so many scores of miles a day as many men on the plains
+customarily cover. And though for our city purposes and mounts it is
+distinctly unavailable, one must be cautious in depreciating a seat
+which is clung to so tenaciously by so many splendid riders. It is a
+mistake to suppose that the Southerners and Mexicans, as well as
+soldiers, all ride with straight leg. While you often see this fault
+carried to an extreme among all these, the best horsemen I have
+generally observed riding with a naturally bent knee. And it takes a
+great deal to convince a good rider of any of these classes that a man
+who will lean and rise to a trot knows the A B C of equestrianism.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE III.
+   THE RACK OR RUNNING WALK.]
+
+Whether the first saddle had a short seat and long stirrups, _a la
+militaire_, or a long seat with short ones, _a l'Anglaise_, matters
+little. Though the original home of the horse boasts to-day the
+shortest of stirrups (and even in Xenophon's time this appears to have
+been the Asiatic habit), a reasonably long one would seem to have been
+the most natural first step from the bareback seat. If so, what is it
+that has gradually lengthened the seat of the Englishman, who
+represents for us to-day the favorite type of civilized horsemanship,
+and if not the best, perhaps nearest that which is best suited to our
+Eastern wants?
+
+No doubt, in early days, horses were mainly ridden on a canter or a
+gallop. If perchance a trot, it was a mere shog, comfortable enough
+with a short seat and high cantle. The early horse was a short-gaited
+creature. But two things came gradually about. Dirt roads grew into
+turnpikes; and the pony-gaited nag began, about the days of the Byerly
+Turk, nearly two hundred years ago, to develop into the long-striding
+thoroughbred. The paved pike speedily proved that a canter sooner
+injures the fetlock joints of the forelegs and strains the sinews of
+the hind than a trot, and men merciful unto their beasts or careful of
+their pockets began to ride the latter gait. But when the step in the
+trot became longer and speedier as the saddle horse became better
+bred, riders were not long in finding out that to rise in the stirrups
+was easier for both man and beast, and as shorter stirrups materially
+aid the rise, the seat began to grow in length. It has been proved
+satisfactorily to the French, who have always been "close" riders,
+that to rise in the trot saves the horse to a very great percentage,
+put by some good authorities at as high a figure as one sixth.
+Moreover, it was not a strange step forward. That it is natural to
+rise in the trot is shown by there being to-day many savage or
+semi-civilized tribes which practice the habit in entire
+unconsciousness of its utility being a disputed point anywhere.
+
+Another reason for shortening the leathers no doubt prevailed. The
+English found the most secure seat for vigorous leaping to be the long
+one. Of course a little obstacle can be cleared in any saddle; but
+with the long seat, the violent exertion of the horse in a high jump
+does not loosen the grip with knees and calves, but at most only
+throws one's buckskin from the saddle, as indeed it should not even do
+that. For the knees being well in front of, instead of hanging below,
+the seat of honor, enables a man to lean back and sustain the jar of
+landing without parting company with his mount, while a big jump with
+stirrups too long, if it unseats you at all, loosens your entire grip,
+or may throw you against the pommel in a highly dangerous manner.
+
+Moreover, with short stirrups, the horse is able on occasion to run
+and jump "well away from under you," while, except during the leap
+itself, the weight for considerable distances may be sustained by the
+stirrups alone, and thus be better distributed for the horse over
+ground where the footing is unsteady, as it is in ridge and furrow.
+
+No better illustration of the uses of these several seats than an
+English cavalry officer. On parade he will ride with the longest of
+stirrups compatible with not sitting on his crotch. To rise in the
+saddle is a forbidden luxury to the soldier. Despite some recent
+experiments in foreign service, and the fact that on the march the
+cavalry-man may be permitted to rise, nay, encouraged to do so, what
+more ridiculous than a troop of cavalry on parade, each man bobbing up
+and down at his own sweet will? The horse suitable for a trooper is a
+short, quick-gaited, handy animal, chosen largely for this quality,
+and made still more so by being taught to work in a collected manner
+by the _manege_. You can very comfortably sit him with a military
+saddle at a pretty sharp parade trot. Now, suppose our cavalry officer
+is going for a canter in Rotten Row,--he will at once shorten his
+stirrup-leathers a couple of holes; and if he were going to ride
+cross-country, he would shorten them still a couple more. Experience
+has taught him the peculiar uses of each position.
+
+Some writers claim that one seat ought to suffice for all occasions.
+And so it can be made to do. This one seat may, however, not always be
+the best adapted to the work immediately in hand, or to the animal
+ridden. A slight change is often a gain. Every one has noticed that
+different horses, as well as different ground ridden over, vary the
+rider's seat in the same saddle.
+
+But excellent as is the long hunting-seat in its place, one can
+conceive no more ridiculous sight than the English swell I once saw in
+Colorado, who had brought his own pigskin with him, and started out
+for a ten days' ride across the prairie on an Indian pony, the only
+available mount. The pony's short gait was admirable for a long day's
+jaunt in a peaked saddle, but so little suited to a cross-country rig,
+that the swell's condition at the end of the first fifty miles must
+have been pitiable. This unusual "tenderfoot" exhibition elicited a
+deal of very natural laughter, and its butt, who was an excellent but
+narrow-minded horseman, though he stuck with square-toed British pluck
+to his rig for a few days, came back to Denver equipped _a la_ cowboy.
+His Piccadilly saddle had been abandoned to the prairie-dogs.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+Patroclus watches his rider's mood. He has become contemplative too,
+and has taken kindly to our sober pace. But you shall have your turn,
+my glossy pet. Let us get off this macadamized road where we can find
+some cantering ground.
+
+As I shorten the reins, 'tis indeed a pleasure to see your head come
+up, neck arched, eye brightening, alternate ears moving back to catch
+your master's word, feet at once gathered under you, and nerves and
+muscles on keenest tension. Every motion is springy, elastic, bold,
+and free, as full of power as it is of ease. No wonder, Patroclus,
+that eyes so often turn to watch you. No wonder that you seem
+conscious that they do. For though we both know that the first test of
+the horse is performance, yet having that, there is pleasure to us
+both in your graceful gaits.
+
+To give the reins the least possible shake will send you into the most
+ecstatic of running walks, as fast as one needs to go, and so easy
+that it is a constant wonder how you do it. This is no common amble or
+bumping pace, but the true four beat rack. And as you toss your head
+and champ your bit, Patroclus, with the pleasure of your accelerated
+motion, how well you seem to know the comfort of your rider.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+This running walk or rack, by the way, is one of the most delightful
+of gaits. Its universal adoption in the South by every one who can buy
+a racker is due to the roads, which, for many months of the year, are
+so utterly impassable that you have to pick your way in and out of the
+woods and fields on either side, and rarely meet a stretch where you
+can start into a swinging trot. But a horse will fall from a walk into
+a rack, or _vice versa_, with the greatest of ease to himself and
+rider, and if the stretch is but a hundred yards will gain some
+distance in that short bit of ground. If you have a fifty mile ride
+over good roads in comfortable weather, perhaps a smart trot, if easy,
+of course alternating with the walk, is as good a single gait as you
+can ride. But you need to trot or canter a goodly stretch, not to
+shorten rein at every dozen rods, for the transition from a walk to
+either of these gaits or back again, though slight, is still an
+exertion; while from the walk to the rack and back the change is so
+imperceptible that one is made conscious of it only by the patter of
+the horse's feet. Here again, the country's need, roads, and climate
+have bred a most acceptable gait. But it has made the Southerner
+forget what an inspiriting thing a swinging twelve-mile trot can be
+along a smooth and pretty road; and you cannot give away a trotting
+horse for use in the saddle south of Mason and Dixon. The rack soon
+grows into the single-foot, which only differs from it in being
+faster, and the latter is substituted for the trot. To go a six or
+eight mile gait, holding a full glass of water in the hand, and not to
+spill a drop, is the test of perfection in the racker. And for a lazy
+feeling day, or for hot weather, anywhere, it is the acme of comfort.
+Or it is, indeed, a useful gait in winter, when it is too cold for a
+clipped horse to walk and your nag has yet not stretched his legs
+enough to want to go at sharper speed. It must, however, be
+acknowledged that it is very rare that a horse will rack perfectly as
+well as trot. He is apt to get the gaits mixed.
+
+A rack is half way between a pace and a trot. In the pace, the two
+feet of each side move and come down together; in the trot, the two
+alternate feet do so. In the running walk, or in the single-foot, each
+hind foot follows its leader at the half interval, no two feet coming
+to the ground together, but in regular succession, so as to produce
+just twice as many foot-falls as a trot or a pace. Hence the _one_,
+_two_, _three_, _four_, patter of the horse gives to the ear the
+impression of very great rapidity, when really moving at only half the
+apparent speed. The result of the step is a swaying, easy back, which
+you can sit with as much ease as a walk. Rackers will go a six-mile
+gait, single-footers much faster. I once owned a single-footing mare,
+who came from Alexander's farm and was sired by Norman, who could
+single-foot a full mile in three minutes. As a rule, the speed is not
+much more than half that rate. And either a rack or single-foot is apt
+to spoil the square trot; or if you break a horse to trot, you will
+lose the other gaits. A perfect all-day racker or a speedy
+single-footer can scarcely be aught else.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+I did not mean to apply that rule to you, Patroclus! We both of us
+know better. For the exceptional horse can learn to rack or
+single-foot without detriment to his other paces, if he be not kept
+upon these gaits too long at any time.
+
+Half a mile ahead of us is the little grass-grown lane, where we can
+indulge in a canter or a frolicsome gallop. Shall we quicken our speed
+a trifle? Simply a "Trot, Pat!" and on the second step you fall into
+as square and level a trot as ever horse could boast. I know how
+quickly you obey my voice, old boy, and but one step from my word I am
+ready to catch the first rise, and without the semblance of a jar we
+are in a full sharp trot. How I love to look over your shoulder,
+Patroclus, and see your broad, flat knee come swinging up, and showing
+at every step its bony angles beyond the point of your shoulder;
+though, indeed, your shoulder is so slanting that the saddle sits well
+back, and your rider is too old a soldier to lean much to his trot.
+And you will go six to--I had almost said sixteen--miles an hour at
+this gait, nor vary an ounce of pressure on your velvety mouth. How is
+it, Patroclus, that you catch the meaning of my hands so readily?
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+The fancy of to-day is for the daisy-clipping thoroughbred. And when
+they do not run to the knife-blade pattern, they may be the finest
+mounts a man can throw his leg across. But my fancy for the road has
+always been for the higher stepping half-bred. Granted that on the
+turf or across a flying country blood will tell. Granted that
+brilliant knee action is mainly ornamental. Still, in America, the
+half-bred will average much better in looks, and vastly more
+satisfactory in hardy service. Where shall we again find the
+equivalent of the Morgan breed, now all but lost in the desire to get
+the typical running horse? For saddle work, and the very best of its
+kind, there was never a finer pattern than the Morgan. Alas, that we
+have allowed him to disappear! His worth would soon come to the fore
+in these days of saddle pleasures. The thoroughbred's characteristic
+is ability to perform prodigies of speed and endurance at exceptional
+times. But the strong, every-day-in-the-year good performer is usually
+no more than half-bred, if even that. Moreover, you can find a hundred
+daisy-clippers for one proud stepper, be he thoroughbred or galloway.
+There is such a thing as waste of action. No one wants to straddle a
+black Hanoverian out of a hearse. But the horse who steps high may be
+as good a stayer as the one who does not, and high action is a beauty
+which delights men's eyes and opens their purses. Because the long
+stride of the turf is better for being low, it is not safe to apply
+this rule to the road.
+
+There are many more worthless brutes among thoroughbreds than among
+the common herd. While it is easy to acknowledge that the perfect
+thoroughbred excels all other horses, the fact must also be noted that
+he is of extremest rarity, and even when found is infrequently up to
+weight. If we use the word advisedly, only the horse registered in the
+Stud Book is a thoroughbred. These have no early training whatever,
+except to allow themselves to be mounted, and to run their best. If
+they stand the initial test of speed, they are reserved for the turf,
+and there wholly spoiled for the saddle or for any other purpose of
+pleasure. If they do not, they are turned adrift, half spoiled in
+mouth and manners by tricky stable-boys, and may or may not fall into
+good hands. For one thoroughbred with perfect manners, sound, and up
+to weight, there are a score of really good half-breds, as near
+perfection as their owners choose or are able to make them.
+
+What we in America are apt colloquially to call a thoroughbred is only
+a horse which, in his looks, shows some decided infusion of good
+blood, or is sired by a well-bred horse. But it is to be remembered
+that of two horses with an equal strain of pure blood, one may have
+reverted to a coarse physical type, and the other to the finer. And
+the one who has inherited the undeniable stamp of the common-bred
+ancestor may also have inherited from the other side those qualities
+of constitution, courage, intelligence, and speed, which sum up the
+value of high English blood. Not one fine-bred horse in one hundred--I
+speak from the ownership of, and daily personal intimacy for
+considerable periods with, over fifty good saddle beasts,--has as many
+of the admirable qualities of pure blood as Patroclus. And yet (_absit
+omen_), he has a wave in his tail, and though his feet and legs are
+perfect in shape, and as clean as a colt's, they are far beyond the
+thoroughbred's in size. He shows that his ancestry runs back both to
+the desert and the plough. In America, surely, handsome is that
+handsome does. Let us value good blood for its qualities, not looks,
+and ride serviceable half-breds, instead of sporting worthless weeds
+because they approach to the clothes-horse pattern, or have necks like
+camels.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+One of the most distinctly promising features of the athletic
+tendencies of to-day is the mania for the saddle. Fifteen years ago,
+the boys along the Boston streets used to hoot at your master,
+Patroclus. Not, indeed, that he had a poor seat or needed to "get
+inside and pull down the blinds," as the London cad might phrase it,
+for a good or bad seat was all alike to them; rather at the wholly
+unusual sight of a man on horseback--outside of politics.
+
+But the number of good horsemen, and horsewomen too, is growing every
+day. Here comes a couple at a brisk round trot. How can we notice the
+lad, Patroclus, when the lassie looks so sweetly? In her neat habit,
+with dainty protruding foot and ankle, sitting her trappy-gaited mount
+with ease and grace, the bloom of health fairly dazzling you as she
+rushes by, so that you doubt whether it be her pretty eye and white
+teeth or her ruddy skin and happy face which has set even your ancient
+heart a-throbbing, how can a woman look more attractive?
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE IV.
+   A SHARP SINGLE-FOOT.]
+
+But the alluring sight is not long-lived. Following hard upon them
+comes, not the first rider who has chased a petticoat, a young
+Anglomaniac. He fancies that his hunting-crop, his immaculate rig, and
+his elbows out-Britishing the worst of British snobs, as he leans far
+over his pommel, make him a pattern rider. You can see the daylight
+under his knees. A sudden plunge would send him, Lord knows where!
+Haply his dock-tailed plug remembers the shafts full well and steadily
+plods ahead. But bless his little dudish heart! he will learn better.
+As his months in the saddle increase, he will find his seat as well as
+his place. We Americans are the making of an excellent race of
+horsemen. It is a pleasure to see the increase in the number of
+promising riders who seek the western suburbs every day. We shall all
+ride, as we manage to do everything, well,--after a while. There is of
+course a lot of rubbish and imported--rot, shall we call it? But what
+odds? so there is in art, music, politics, religion.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+You see the corner of the lane, Patroclus, while I have been thus
+musing, and your lively ear and instinctively quickened gait rouse my
+half-dazed thoughts. Here we are. Shall we take our accustomed canter?
+You always wait the word, though you are eagerness itself, for you do
+not yet know when I want you to start, or which foot I may ask you to
+lead with. Though, indeed, you will sometimes prance a bit, and change
+step in the alternate graceful bounds of the passage, to invite and
+urge my choice. The least pressure of one leg, and off you go, leading
+with the opposite shoulder. And you will keep this foot by the mile,
+Patroclus, or change at every second step, should I ask you so to do.
+You need but the slightest monition of my leg, and instantly your
+other shoulder takes the lead. I see you want to gallop, boy! But not
+quite yet. You must not forget that you have been taught, as they say
+in Kentucky, to canter all day long in the shade of an apple tree, if
+so be it your master wishes. You shall have your gallop anon. But you
+must never forget that a horse who can only walk or go a twelve-mile
+trot or hand-gallop, though he may lead the hunt cross-country, is an
+unmitigated nuisance on the road. Slow and easy gaits are as valuable
+to the park-hack as long wind and speed to the racer. And although
+Boston, as yet, boasts no Rotten Row, are not the daily rides through
+its exquisite environments the equivalent of the canter in that justly
+celebrated resort, rather than the mere country tramp upon a handy
+roadster or the ride to cover on a rapid covert-hack? And yet our
+imitation of our British cousins has approximated less to the pleasure
+ride than to the cross-country style. Perhaps, in our eagerness to
+convince ourselves that we have learned all there is worth knowing in
+the art, we have aped what is confessedly the finest of horseback
+sports, and forgotten the more moderate fashion of Hyde Park. Let us
+remember that we can saunter on the road every day, while riding to
+hounds is for most of us a rarish luxury.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+Because a horse can go well to hounds, it does not follow that he is
+fit for park or road work any more than the three-year-old who wins
+the Derby or St. Leger is fitted for a palfrey. A horse whose business
+it is to run and jump must have his head; while a horse, to be a
+clever and agreeable hack, should learn that the bit is a limitation
+of his action, and that the slightest movement of the hand or leg of
+the rider has its meaning. What is impossible in galloping over
+ploughed fields is essential to comfort on the road. In the field,
+everything must be subservient to saving the horse; the rider's
+comfort is the rule of the park. It is every day that we may see a
+rider who deems his excellent hunter a good saddle beast, when,
+however clever cross-country, he is absolutely ignorant of the first
+elements of the _manege_. He forgets that each is perfect in his
+own place and may be useless in the other's.
+
+I am the owner of a fine-bred mare, whom I have as yet had no
+opportunity to school. She is the perfect type of a twelve-stone
+hunter. After hounds she will attract the eye of the whole field for
+distinguished beauty, and ridden up to her capacity, can always be in
+the first flight. She has speed, endurance, and fine disposition, is
+as sound and hardy as a hickory stick, and in her place unsurpassed.
+Almost any of the horsemen of to-day's Modern Athens would select this
+mare in preference to Patroclus. And yet, a four-in-hand of her type,
+as she now is, Tantivy coach thrown in for make-weight, are not worth
+one Patroclus for real saddle work, because she has no conception of
+moderate gaits. She is bound to go twelve miles an hour if you let her
+out of a walk, or fret at the restraint. I can ride Patroclus
+twenty-five miles without fatigue. If I ride the mare ten miles, I
+come in tired, drenched with heat, and probably with my temper
+somewhat ruffled, while she has fretted to a lather more than once,
+and we have both been so hot during the entire ride that, if the day
+is raw, it has been dangerous to ease into a walk. If I ride Patroclus
+over the same ground in the same time, we shall both come in fresh as
+a daisy, dry, and each well-pleased with the other. While this mare
+can gallop fast and is easy and kind, a man must work his passage to
+make her canter a six-mile gait. She has no more ambition than
+Patroclus, but she does not curb it to the will of her rider. With a
+knowledge of all which, however, most of our young swells would select
+the mare for simple road-riding, because she looks so like a
+thoroughbred hunter, and rather suggests the impression that they
+habitually ride to hounds. As well saunter in the park in a pink coat
+and with "tops carefully dressed to the color of Old Cheddar."
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+The _manege_ need not mean all the little refinements of training
+which, however delightful to the initiated, are unnecessary to comfort
+or safety. But no horse can be called a good saddle beast whose
+forehand and croup will not yield at once to the lightest pressure
+of rein or leg. Most horses will swing their forehands with some
+readiness, if not in a well-balanced manner. But not many are taught
+to swing the croup at all; very few can do so handily. The perfect
+saddle horse should be able to swing his croup about in a complete
+circle, of which one fore foot is the immovable centre, or his
+forehand about the proper hind foot, in either direction at will. He
+should come "in hand," that is, gather his legs well under him, so as
+to be on a perfect balance the moment you take up the reins and close
+your legs upon him. He should in the canter or gallop start with
+either foot leading, or instantly change foot in motion at the will of
+his rider. He should have easy, handy gaits, the more the better, if
+he can keep them distinct and true. These accomplishments, added to
+a light mouth and a temper of equal courage and moderation, or, in
+short, "manners," make that rare creature,--the perfect saddle horse.
+
+It is in this that the English err. In their perfect development of
+the hunter and the racer they neglect the training of the hack. Though
+it be heresy to the mania of the day to say so, it is none the less
+true that while you seek your bold as well as discreet and experienced
+cross-country rider in England, you must go to the Continent, or among
+the British cavalry, to find your accomplished horseman.
+
+It is the general impression among men who ride to hounds, and still
+more among men who pretend to do so, that leaping is the _ultima
+thule_ of equestrianism; and that a man who can sit a horse over a
+four-foot hurdle has graduated in the art of horsemanship. The
+corollary to this error is also an article of faith among men who
+hunt, that is, that no other class of riders can leap their horses
+boldly and well. But both ideas are as strange as they are mistaken.
+
+The cavalry of Prussia, Austria, and Italy show the finest of
+horsemanship. More than a quarter century ago, the author spent three
+years in Berlin under the tuition of a retired major-general of the
+Prussian army, and saw a great deal of the daily inside life, as well
+as the exceptional parade life, of the army. He has often seen a
+column of cavalry, with sabres drawn, ride across water which would
+bring half the Myopia Hunt to a stand-still on an ordinary run after
+hounds. Why should not men whose business it is to ride, do so well?
+
+Think you there was not good horsemanship at Vionville, when von
+Bredow (one of the author's old school friends, by the way) with his
+six squadrons, to enable Bruddenbrock to hold his position till the
+reinforcements of the Tenth Corps could reach him, rode into the
+centre of the Sixth French Corps d'Armee? In slender line, he and his
+men, three squadrons of the Seventh Cuirassiers, and three of the
+Sixteenth Uhlans, charged over the French artillery in the first line,
+the French infantry in line of battle, and reached the mitrailleuses
+and reserves in the rear, where they sabred the gunners at their guns.
+What though but thirteen officers and one hundred and fifty men out of
+near a thousand returned from that gallant ride? Though no Tennyson
+has sung their glorious deed, though we forget the willing courage
+with which they faced a certain sacrifice for the sake of duty to the
+Fatherland, think you those men rode not well, as a mere act of
+horsemanship?
+
+Think you that the handful of men of the Eighth Pennsylvania, at
+Chancellorsville, when they charged down upon Stonewall Jackson's
+victorious and elated legions, riding in column through the chapparal
+and over the fallen timber of the Wilderness, carving their path
+through thousands of the best troops who ever followed gallant leader,
+sat not firmly in their saddles? Think you that the men who followed
+Sheridan in many a gallant charge, or Fitz Hugh Lee, forsooth, could
+not ride as well as the best of us across a bit of turf, with a modest
+wall now and then to lend its zest to the pleasure? Neither we nor our
+British cousins can monopolize all the virtue of the world, even in
+the art equestrian.
+
+As there is no doubt that fox-hunting is one of the most inspiriting
+and manly of occupations, or that the English are preeminent in their
+knowledge of the art, so there is likewise no doubt that equally stout
+riders sit in foreign saddles. And though each would have to learn the
+other's trade, I fancy you could sooner teach a score or a hundred
+average cavalry officers of any nation to ride well across country,
+than an equal number of clever, fox-hunting Englishmen to do the mere
+saddle work of any well-drilled troops. Leaping is uniformly practiced
+and well-taught, in all regular cavalry regiments of every army with
+which I have been familiar in all parts of the world.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+Well, Patroclus, you have earned your gallop. I loosen in the least my
+hold upon the reins, and shaking your head from very delight, off you
+go like the wind. Never could charger plunge into a mad gallop more
+quickly than you, Patroclus. Your stride is long, your gather quick,
+and the reserve power in your well-balanced movements so inspiring,
+that I would almost ride you at the Charles River, in the expectation
+that you would clear it. But the lane is all too short. Steady, sir,
+steady! and down you come in a dozen bounds to a gait from which you
+can fall into a walk at word.
+
+But what is that? A rustling in the woods beside us! That sounds
+indeed frightsome enough to make you start and falter. You are not
+devoid of fear, Patroclus. No high-couraged horse can ever be. But
+though you may tremble in every limb, if I speak to you, I may safely
+throw the reins upon your neck. So, boy! To face danger oftener
+insures safety than to run from it. To the right about, and let us see
+what it means. Steady, again! Now stand, and let it come. There,
+Patroclus, despite your snort of fear, it is only a couple of stray
+calves cutting their ungainly capers as they make their way towards
+home. Their bustle, like that of so many of the rest of us, far
+exceeds their importance. Was not this much better seen than avoided?
+You would have hardly liked this pleasant lane again had we not seen
+the matter through.
+
+I have never kept you in condition, Patroclus, to stand heavy bursts
+after hounds, or indeed any exceptionally long or sharp run. That
+means too much deprivation of your daily company. Nor indeed, be it
+confessed, is your master himself often in the condition requisite to
+do the sharpest work. It will generally be noticed that the clear eye
+and firm muscle of the rider is a factor in the problem of how to be
+in at the death, as well as the lungs and courage of the hunter. And
+yet, Patroclus, you are, within your limits, a model jumper, and
+always seem to have a spare leg. No horse delights more in being
+headed at a wall or ditch than you, even in cold blood. For any horse
+worthy the name will jump after a fashion in company. At the end of
+our lane we can take the short cut towards the great highway, over the
+gate and the little brook and hedge. As I talk to you, I can see that
+you catch my purpose, for as we draw near the place, the might of
+conscious strength seems to course through all your veins. Perhaps I
+have unwittingly settled into my seat as I thought of the four-foot
+gate. Here we are, and there is just enough bend in the road to ride
+at the gate with comfort. Head up, ears erect, eyes starting from out
+their sockets, no need to guide you towards it, my Patroclus! No
+excitement, no uncertainty, no flurry. You and I know how surely we
+are going over. A quiet canter, but full of elastic power, to within
+about fifty feet of the jump, and then a short burst, measuring every
+stride, till with a "Now boy!" as you approach the proper gather, I
+give you your head, and you go into the air like a swallow. Just a
+fraction of a second--how much longer it seems!--and we land cleverly,
+well together, and in three strides more you have fallen into a jog
+again. And now you look back, lest, perchance, the lump of sugar or
+Seckel pear which used to reward you when you were learning your
+lesson should be forthcoming now. But no, Patroclus, my good word and
+a kindly pat for your docility and strength must be your meed to-day.
+Canter along on the soft turf till we come to the little brook. We
+will call it a brook, and think of it as a big one, though it is
+barely eight feet wide. But never mind. We can jump thrice its width
+just as well as across it. Remember, Patroclus, water requires speed
+and well-set purpose, as height does clean discretion. At it, my boy!
+Take your own stride. There's lots of room this side and more on the
+other bank.
+
+    "Harden your heart, and catch hold of the bridle,
+    Steady him! Rouse him! Over he goes!"
+
+In the air again; this time it seems like a minute almost. There,
+Patroclus, if it had been twenty feet of water, you would not have
+known the odds. Now for the road and company.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+The same reasoning may be applied to saddles as to gaits. To pull down
+a bull, the Texan must be furnished with a horn-pommel, which would
+have been highly dangerous to his rider if Patroclus had happened to
+come down over the gate just leaped. Indeed, nothing but the flattest
+of saddles is safe to the steeple-chaser. On the contrary, the soldier
+rides a trot, or uses his sabre to much better advantage with a cantle
+sufficiently high to lean against. And any man is liable to have some
+physical conformation requiring a peculiar saddle.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE V.
+   AN EASY CANTER.]
+
+The present generation of new-fledged riders would fain tie us down to
+the English hunting-seat by laws like the Medes and Persians. This is
+a good pattern for our Eastern needs, but let us not call it the only
+one. It is, of course, well when in Rome to do as the Romans do, or at
+least so nearly like them as not to provoke remark. But every one
+cannot do this, and the old trooper is not apt to ride this way. And
+yet, there are thousands of ancient cavalry soldiers all over this
+country, North and South, who, naked weapon in hand, have done such
+feats of horsemanship as would shame most of the stoutest of to-day's
+fox-hunting, polo-playing riders. I do not refer to the obstacles they
+used to ride at,--which meant a vast deal more than merely an ugly
+tumble over a three-foot stone wall; I refer to their stout seats in
+the saddle, and the rough ground they were wont to cover when they
+rode down upon and over a belching wall of fire. For all which,
+whenever we see one of these old troopers out for a ride, modestly
+(for he is always modest) airing his army saddle, strong curb, and
+long and hooded stirrups, we may, perchance, notice the jeer of the
+stripling, whose faultless dress and bang-tailed screw are but a sham
+which hides his lack of heart. It always gives one's soul a glow of
+pride to see the well-known seat, and one is fain tempted to ride up
+to the old comrade and grasp him by the hand. A thorough rider will
+recognize his equal under any garb. It is pretense alone which merits
+a rebuke. You cannot make a poor rider a good one by mounting him in a
+fashionable saddle, any more than you can make a worthless brute a
+good horse by giving his tail the latest dock.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+Until within no great time the modified military seat has been the one
+which formed the basis of instruction. The riding-master, I presume,
+still insists, with civilian and recruit alike, on feet parallel with
+the horse, heels down, toes in, knee grip, and a hold of reins utterly
+unknown in the hunting-field. And with a certain reason, though indeed
+the old whip's rule of "'eels and 'ands down, 'ead and 'eart 'igh," is
+the whole of the story, after all. For the man who begins with a knee
+grip will never forget what his knees are for, and will not, like the
+good little dude we passed a while ago, show daylight between them and
+the saddle-flap at every rise. But the knee grip alone will not
+suffice for all occasions, despite our military or riding-school
+friends. A madly plunging horse or a big leap will instinctively call
+out a grip with all the legs a man can spare. Moreover, the closer you
+keep your legs to the horse without clasping him, the better. Go into
+the hunting-field or over a steeple-chase course, and you will find
+that the inside of your boot-tops--and not only yours, but every other
+jockey's as well--have been rubbed hard and constantly against the
+saddle. There lies the proof. At West Point, and in fact at every
+military school, the cadets are sometimes practiced to ride with a
+scrap of paper held to the saddle by the knee while they leap a bar,
+and at the same time thrust or cut with the sabre at a convenient
+dummy foe. I have seen a silver dollar so held between the knee and
+saddle. But the bar is not a succession of high stone walls, nor is
+the cadet riding a burst of several miles. And with a longer stirrup
+it is more natural to keep the foot parallel with the horse's side.
+To-day, the best riders do not so hold their feet. Cross-country a man
+certainly does not. The proof is forthcoming at the Country Club on
+any race-day, or at every meet here or in England, that a man riding
+over an obstacle of any size will use all the legs he can without
+digging his spurs into his horse's flanks, in a way he could not do
+with the feet parallel to the horse's sides.
+
+The modern dispensation differs from the old one in not being tied to
+the military seat. The Rev. Sydney Smith objected to clergymen riding,
+but modified his disapproval in those cases when they "rode very badly
+and turned out their toes." A generation ago, a man was always
+thinking of the position of his feet, as he cares not to do to-day, if
+he sits firmly in the saddle, and boasts light hands.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+While on this subject, one cannot refrain from indulging in a friendly
+laugh at the attempt to bend our unreasonable Eastern weather to the
+conditions of a fox-hunting climate. The hunting season is that time
+of the year when the crops are out of the ground. In England, during
+the winter months, the weather is open and moist, and the soft ground
+makes falling "delightfully easy," as dear old John Leech has it. And
+the little hedges and ditches of some of the good hunting counties, or
+indeed the ox-fences and grassy fields of Leicestershire, are such as
+to make a day out a positive pound of pleasure, with scarce an ounce
+of danger to spice it, if you choose to ride with moderation. For the
+best rider in the Old Country is not the hare-brained cockney who
+risks both his horse's and his own less valuable neck in the field; it
+is he who chooses discreetly his course, and makes headway with the
+least exertion to his hunter compatible with his keeping a good place
+in the field. The man who appreciates how jumping takes strength out
+of a horse, or who is any judge of pace, is apt to save, not risk him.
+Few men willingly jump an obstacle which they can readily avoid
+without too much delay. Read the legends of the famous hunting-men of
+England, and you will find discretion always outranking valor. Any
+fool can ride at a dangerous obstacle. Courage of that kind is a
+common virtue. But it takes a make-up of quite a different nature to
+be in, as a rule, at the death. How many five-barred gates will a man
+jump when he can open them? How much water will he face when there is
+a bridge near by? Does not every one dismount in hilly countries to
+ease his horse? A good rider must be ready to throw his heart over any
+obstacle possible to himself and his horse, when he cannot get round
+it. But a discreet horseman puts his horse only at such leaps as he
+must take, or which will win him a distinct advantage.
+
+England is naturally a hunting country. But here, Lord save the mark!
+there are no foxes to speak of. Scent won't lie, as a general thing,
+with the thermometer below thirty (though scent is one of those
+mysterious things which only averages according to rules, and every
+now and then shows an unaccountable exception), and the obstacles are
+snake fences or stone walls with lumpy, frozen ground to land on, or,
+belike, a pile of bowlders or a sheet of ice. A bad fall means
+potentially broken bones or a ruined horse, and while you are beating
+cover for the fox who won't be found, you are shaking with the cold,
+and your clipped or over-heated beast is sowing the seeds of
+lung-fever.
+
+You, Patroclus, were once laid up five months by landing on a snag the
+further side of a most harmless-looking stone wall, and tearing out
+some of the coronal arteries.
+
+There are plenty of good horseback sports without a resort to what is
+clearly out of the latitude. If you wait for good hunting weather, the
+crops interfere with your sport, and our farmers have not the English
+inducement to welcome the hunt across the fields, tilled at the sweat
+of their brow. In the South, both weather and much waste land make
+fox-hunting more easy to carry on. But even there it does not thrive.
+Here in the East it will not be made indigenous.
+
+Not but what, on a bright sunny day, a meet at which equine admirers
+can show their neat turn-outs and glossy steeds and discuss horseflesh
+in the general and the particular is a delightful experience. And
+indeed, wherever crops and covers do not monopolize the country, a
+good drag-hunt may often be had before cold weather mars the sport.
+Perchance, in time, Reynard may take up his abode with us, when
+vulpicide shall be punished by real ostracism. For has not the Ettrick
+Shepherd proven conclusively that Reynard loves the chase? But far
+from underrating the caged fox or anise-seed bag, hare and hounds
+would seem to afford the better sport. For the hares, an they will,
+can carry you across a country where each one can choose his own
+course, instead of being obliged to follow a leader through
+wood-paths, and through second growth which is all but jungle, where,
+if one happens to blunder at an obstacle, your follower will come
+riding down atop of you, and where you are bound to be "nowhere"
+unless you get away with the first half-dozen men.
+
+But spite of all its drawbacks, Patroclus, you and I enjoy in equal
+measure a run under fair conditions as much as the best of them. And
+let us hope the hunting fever will be kept up in healthy fashion, for
+we two can select our weather, and we are not afraid of our reputation
+if we drop out before the finish. This kind of work soon shakes our
+novices into the saddle, and its many excellencies far outweigh its
+few absurdities. Let him who runs it down try rather a run with the
+pack some sunny day. If he does not find it manly sport, and stout
+hearts in the van of the field, he can tell us why thereafter. The
+outcome of to-day's riding mania is well ahead of the young men's
+billiard-playing and bar-drinking of twenty years ago.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+There are good riders in every land and in every species of saddle.
+Facts are the best arguments. The North American Indian and the
+follower of the Prophet each performs his prodigies of horsemanship,
+the one bareback with hanging leg, the other in a peaked saddle with
+knee all but rubbing his nose. Whoso has laughed over Leech's sketches
+of Mossoo, who makes a _promenade a cheval_, or indeed has watched him
+in the Bois, is fain to doubt that a Frenchman can ride well. And yet
+he does. Was not Baucher the father of fine horsemanship? A rough and
+tumble, plucky rider, or one who is experienced and discreet after
+hounds as well, is more frequently found in Great Britain; a highly
+skilled equestrian (is the author nearing a hornet's nest?) in France,
+or elsewhere across the Channel. But we naturally must seek the
+Continental rider in the camp, for is not the Continent itself one
+vast camp? It is perhaps hard to decide whether the cavalry officer
+who is master of the intricacies of the _manege_ or the country
+gentleman who has won a reputation with the Pytchley or the Belvoir
+may be properly called the more accomplished horseman. Each in his
+place is unequaled. But is it not true, that the former can more
+quickly adapt himself to the habits of hunting than the latter to
+those of the Haute Ecole? And do not the methods of the School give us
+more capacity for enjoying our daily horseback exercise, than any
+amount of experience with hounds?
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+It is sometimes said in England that a School-rider reining in his
+steed never looks as if he were having a thoroughly good time, as does
+the man who lets his horse go his own inspiriting gait along the road.
+But why not? Is inspiration only found in excess of physical motion? If
+so, to use an exaggerated comparison, why does not Paddy at Donnybrook
+Fair, trailing his coat and daring some one to tread on the tail of it,
+enjoy himself more thoroughly than the man who quietly plays a game of
+chess or whist? Or to use a more nearly equal simile, may not a man
+find as great enjoyment in a skilled game of tennis, as in the violent
+rushes of foot-ball, where two hundred and twenty pounds of mere
+blubber will assuredly bear down all the prowess and aptness of his own
+say one hundred and forty? It is as certain that the pleasure of riding
+a trained horse is greater than that of merely sitting a vigorously
+moving untrained one, as that the delight of intellectual study exceeds
+the excitement of trashy reading. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico_ seems
+not to be uniformly true, for riders unfamiliar with the training of
+the High School almost as invariably run down its methods, as self-made
+business men are apt to discountenance a college education as a
+preliminary discipline for the struggles of life.
+
+It is a fact that no man who has once been a School-rider ever
+abandons either the knowledge he has gained or its constant practice.
+No one can underrate the pleasure of simple motion upon a vigorous
+horse. But the School-rider has this in equal degree with the
+uneducated horseman, coupled with a feeling of control and power and
+ability to perform which the mere man on horseback never attains.
+Moreover, all the powers of the School-rider's horse are within the
+grasp of his hand; and that the powers of the high-strung steed of the
+average equestrian are all too often resident mainly in the animal
+itself is shown by the chapter of accidents daily reiterated in the
+news-columns. The School-man is apt to ride more moderately, and to
+indulge in a bracing gallop less frequently, because to him the
+pleasure of slow and rhythmic movement on a fleet and able horse is
+far greater than mere rapidity can ever be; the untrained rider
+resorts to speed because this is the one exhilaration within the
+bounds of his own or his horse's knowledge.
+
+I do not wish to be understood as advocating the School habit of
+_always_ keeping a horse collected. However much for some purposes I
+admire it, I do not practice it. I often saunter off a half-dozen
+miles without lifting the rein, while Patroclus wanders at his own
+sweet will. I often trot or gallop at my nag's quite unrestrained
+gait. But if I want to collect him, if I want that obedience which the
+School teaches him to yield, he must, to be to me a perfect horse, at
+my slightest intimation give himself absolutely to my control, and
+take all his art from me. I feel that I am a good judge of either
+habit of riding, as I have well tried both, and absolutely adhere to
+neither. I pretend by no means, in School-riding, to have carried my
+art so far as to be even within hail of the great masters of
+equitation; but I have not for many years been without one or more
+horses educated in all the School airs which are applicable to
+road-riding, and I know their value and appreciate it.
+
+Because, then, the cowboy is nowhere in the hunting-field; or because
+the hard-riding squire and M. F. H. cannot drop to the further side of
+his horse while he shoots at his galloping enemy, or pick up a
+kerchief from the ground at a smart gallop; or because the Frenchman
+has to learn his racing trade from an English jockey, it will not do
+to say that each is not among the best of horsemen, or that either is
+better than the other. The style of riding is always the outgrowth of
+certain conditions of necessity or pleasure, and invariably fits those
+conditions well. With us in the East the English habit is no doubt the
+most available; but it can only be made the test of our own needs or
+fashions, not of general equestrianism.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+While all this has been buzzing through your master's brain, you,
+Patroclus, knowing full well that the loosely hanging rein has meant
+liberty within reason to yourself, have wandered away to the nearest
+thicket, and begun to crop the tender leaves and shoots as peacefully
+as you please. To look at your quiet demeanor at this moment one would
+scarcely think that you were such a bundle of nerves. You can be as
+sedate as Rosinante till called upon. But when the bit plays in your
+mouth, you are as full of life and action as the steeds of Diomed with
+flowing manes. Your eye and ear are an index to your mood, and you
+reflect your rider's wish in every step. No man ever bestrode a more
+generous beast than you. Do you remember, Patroclus, the days when you
+carried your little twelve-year-old mistress, and how her first
+lessons in fine equitation were taken in your company? And cleverly
+did she learn indeed. Do you remember how we used to put you on your
+honor, though you were only a five-year-old and dearly loved to romp
+and play? Ay, Patroclus, and fairly did you answer the appeal! With
+the gentle burden on your broad, strong back, her golden-red hair
+streaming behind her in the breeze from under her jaunty hat, you
+would have ridden through fire, my beauty, rather than betray your
+trust. However tempted to a bound, or however startled at some
+fearsome thing, one word--a "Quiet, Pat!"--from that soft girlish
+voice, now hushed for both of us, would never fail to keep you kind
+and steady. And you were ever willing, with even more than your
+accustomed alacrity, to perform your airs at the slightest
+encouragement of the soft hands and gentle voice; and having done so
+would lay back your ears and shake your head with very pleasure at the
+rippling laughter in which your pretty rider's thanks were wont to be
+expressed. I knew, Patroclus, that in your care the little maid was
+quite as safe as with her doll at home.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VI.
+   A TEN-MILE TROT.]
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+
+And now a word about the horse in action, as shown by instantaneous
+photography, and about the war waged between artists and
+photographers. Some disciples of Muybridge would fain have the artist
+depict an animal in an ungainly attitude, because the lens is apt to
+catch him at a point in his stride which looks ungainly, there being
+many more such points than handsome ones. It is the moving creature
+which we admire. The poetry of motion is rarely better seen than in a
+proudly stepping horse. But arrest that motion and you are apt to have
+that which the human eye can neither recognize nor delight itself
+withal. Arrested motion rarely suggests the actual motion we aim to
+depict. The lens will show you every spoke of a rapidly revolving
+wheel, as if at rest. The eye, or the artist, shows you a blur of
+motion. And so with other objects. The lens works in the hundredth
+part of a second; the eye is slower far.
+
+To a certain extent photography, _quoad_ art, is wrong and the limner
+is right. There are some horses which possess a very elegant carriage.
+In their action there are certain periods--generally those at which
+one fore and one hind leg are slowing up at the limit of their forward
+stride--when the eye catches an agreeable impression which is capable
+of being reduced to canvas,--though it is after all the proud motion
+itself which pleases, and this can only be suggested. Now, photography
+robs you of almost all the suggestiveness of the horse's action,
+unless you select only those photographs which approach the action
+caught by the human eye. Even after long study of the Muybridge
+silhouettes, the artistic lover of the horse feels that he must reject
+all but a small percentage of these wonderful anatomical studies. If
+there are periods in the horse's stride which are agreeable to the
+eye, why should the artist not select these for delineation? Why
+indeed does his art not bind him to do so?
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+You, Patroclus, are peculiarly elegant in motion. It is difficult to
+pick a flaw in the symmetry of your gaits. Slow or fast, fresh or
+tired, your motion is always proud and graceful. And yet out of many
+photographs, few suggest your action at all, fewer still even
+passably; none convey to its full extent what all your intimates well
+know.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+To photograph well, a horse must have a good deal, but not an
+excessive amount of action, and with unquestioned grace of curves. The
+reason why horses in very rapid motion photograph illy is to be found
+in the too extreme curves described by their legs in the powerful
+strides of great speed, any position in which, arrested by the lens,
+looks exaggerated,--sprawling. The reason why, on the other hand, the
+photograph of a daisy-clipper moving slowly looks tame is the lack of
+action to suggest the motion which the eye follows in real life. Many
+of the best performers are plain in action. Some of the most faultless
+movers, so far as results or form are concerned, even when agreeable
+to the eye, will show unsightly photographs. Let any one who desires
+to test this matter have a half-dozen instantaneous photographs of his
+pet saddle beast taken. He will surely be convinced that a horse must
+be extremely handsome in motion to give even a passable portrait. If
+he gets one picture in four which shows acceptably, he may be sure
+that he owns a good-looking nag. Among the silhouettes in the Stanford
+Book, scarcely one in twenty shows a handsome outline. This seems to
+be owing, as above explained, to the speed exhibited in almost all the
+performances; and in the slow gaits, to the want of action in the
+subjects. Still, if the pictures had shown the light and shade which
+instantaneous photography is now able to give, many of the plates
+would have made artistic pictures.
+
+There are certainly many minutiae in which the artist can learn from
+the photograph. To give an instance: before reaching the ground, the
+leg in every gait must be stiffened, and the bottom of the foot
+brought parallel to the surface traveled over, or a stumble will
+ensue. This, at first blush, may look awkward; but it is not really
+so. The artist often forgets that a horse must sustain his weight on
+stiff legs, and that these straighten from their graceful curves to
+the supporting position in regular gradation, and reach this position
+just before the foot comes down. Some in other respects most
+attractive sketches fail in this. Often one sees the picture of an
+otherwise handsomely moving horse whose fetlock joint of the foot just
+being planted is so bent forward as to make a drop inevitable. This is
+certainly without the domain of true art.
+
+The origin of such drawing lies probably in the fact that the eye
+catches the bent rather than the straight position of the fetlock,
+because the former occurs when the foot is higher above the ground,
+while the latter position is not so noticeable as being more out of
+the line of sight. But such stumbling pictures are as much a worry to
+the horseman's eye as the ugliest of the Muybridge gallopers is to the
+artist's; and they are wholly unnecessary.
+
+There are many such minor points of criticism of the usual artistic
+work, which the artists should not deem beyond consideration. It is
+quite possible to make the truthful and the artistic go hand in hand.
+
+Except, perhaps, in the gallop. This most disheartening gait
+_will_ not be reduced to what we have been taught to like. There
+is but one of the five "times" of the gallop which suggests even
+tolerable speed,--the one when all four feet are in the air and
+gathered well under the horse. At the instant when one of the hind
+legs is reaching forward to land, there is sometimes a suggestion of
+great speed and vigor. But the successive stilted strides when the
+straightened legs in turn assume the body's weight oppress the very
+soul of the lover of the Racing Plates. It must fain be left to the
+wisest heads, and perhaps better to time, to bring daylight from this
+darkness.
+
+The late John Leech, as far back as the forties, essayed to draw
+running horses as his very keen eye showed him that they really
+looked; but he was laughed out of the idea, and thenceforth stuck to
+the artist's quadruped, though he had been, in his new departure, much
+more nearly approaching anatomy than any one was then aware. And
+thirty years ago, on Epsom Downs, it was revealed to the author, as it
+has no doubt been to thousands of others, that it is the gathered and
+not the spread position of the racer which is impressed upon the eye.
+This is most clearly shown by watching the distant horses through a
+glass. But still we stick to the anatomically impossible spread-eagle
+stride of the turf, and feel that it conveys the idea of speed which
+is not compassed by the set _fac-similes_ of photography.
+
+It has been alleged that a horse never does, nor can take the spread
+position of the typical racer of the artist. This is true enough, for
+he never does extend himself to so great a degree. But at one part of
+the leap he may do this very thing, though by no means to the extent
+usually depicted (see Plate XI.). It is, however, certain that he
+cannot do so at all in the gallop. At the only time when all his feet
+are off the ground in this gait, they are all close together under his
+girths. At all other times there are one or more feet on the ground,
+with legs straight, and at greater or less inclination to the body.
+From front to rear the legs move almost like the spokes of a wheel.
+What the pictures of the turf in the future may be it is hard indeed
+to say.
+
+And yet, the longer one examines the many hundred silhouettes of
+running horses, so well grouped for anatomical study in the Stanford
+Book, the more reconciled to what there is of truth in them one may
+become. Many years ago, I sat during the forenoon in the Turner Room
+of the National Gallery in London, in the company of a friend, herself
+no mean artist, and of decidedly strong artistic taste and correct
+judgment, whose ideas of Turner had been founded solely on what she
+had read, or seen and heard in America, and whose prejudice against
+his apparently overwrought work was excessive. For a full hour few
+words were passed. Then, rising to go: "If I sit here any longer, I
+shall end by liking the man!" quoth she.
+
+It seems to me that the power in these Muybridge photographs grows
+upon you. It is universally acknowledged that one does not see the
+running horse as he is usually drawn; in other words, that the
+artist's run is incorrect. Now, if the retina has anything impressed
+upon it, it must assuredly be either one of the positions actually
+taken by the galloping animal, or else a mere blur of motion. The
+artist draws a blurred wheel because he sees it blurred, and it
+suggests rapid motion. But he will not draw blurred legs, because such
+drawing will not suggest what he desires to convey in his picture. And
+yet, if he is true to what his eye has seen, he must draw some of the
+positions the horse has been in, and not positions which he cannot by
+any possibility have passed through in this gait. I take it for
+granted that the eye catches the gathered positions, and these are the
+ones in which the horse is entirely in the air, with his legs under
+his girths, and with hind feet reaching forward to land. Why should
+not the artist draw these positions, in their thousand variations, in
+lieu of the one single impossible position now universally in vogue?
+Without alleging that he should do so, will the artist tell me why he
+should not? For unless it be assumed that the usually drawn position
+is a sort of geometrical resultant of the rapid series of positions
+passed through, and is hence adopted because the eye mathematically
+and unconsciously reduces these positions to the resultant, where is
+the truth which the artist aims to produce? For I understand art to be
+the reproduction of what the eye can see, or at least its close
+suggestion. And though there may be room to doubt what the eye may
+see, there is no room to doubt what the horse actually does in the
+gallop.
+
+It is probable that the spread-eagle position is a mere outgrowth of
+the canter, which in a slight degree approximates to the action of the
+artist's run, and that the latter has been exaggerated as a means of
+conveying the idea of increased speed. I have yet heard no allegation
+that the eye catches any but the gathering positions of the horse's
+gallop. Now, given this, given an artist equal to and interested in
+the task, and the anatomical results of photography, and it would seem
+as if a sincere desire to reconcile the eye with positions which the
+retina must certainly catch as the horse bounds by might evoke more
+satisfactory results. Here is a life-work worthy of the best of animal
+painters. Who will take it up? I plead for "more light."
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+
+To return to our muttons, it is not too much to aver that any
+well-trained horse knows much more than the average good equestrian.
+It requires a light and practiced hand to evoke Patroclus' highest
+powers. He has never refused an obstacle with his master, or failed to
+clear what he fairly went at. But the least uncertainty betrayed in
+the hand, and Patroclus knows something is wrong, and acts
+accordingly.
+
+I learned a good lesson about spoiling him for my own comfort not long
+ago, when asked the privilege of riding him over a few hurdles on my
+lawn by a friend who had an excellent seat in the saddle, but liked,
+and had been used to a horse who seized hold of the bridle. Patroclus
+took the first, but to my own and my friend's surprise quite refused
+the second, and could by no means be persuaded to face it. On my
+friend's yielding me the saddle, I mounted, and walked Patroclus up to
+the hurdle with a firm word of encouragement; and though he wavered,
+he took it on a standing jump. The slight reward of a tuft of grass
+and a pat made him do better on the second trial, but for weeks
+afterwards he was nervous at that particular hurdle, though at
+anything else he went with his accustomed nerve. My friend and I were
+both unaware of how his hands had erred, but the horse's fine mouth
+had felt it.
+
+Patroclus is essentially a one-man horse. He will always serve well
+for the wage of kindness, but it would take a hard taskmaster but a
+short week to transform him into the semblance of the Biblical wild
+ass's colt. He will change his gaits at will from any one to any
+other. But his rider's hands must be steady and as skilled as his own
+soft mouth, or how can the lesser mind comprehend? He may, at the
+bidding of uncertain reins, change from gait to gait and foot to foot,
+seeking to satisfy his ignorant rider, who, meanwhile, unable to catch
+his meaning, will dub him a stupid, restless brute. A well-trained
+horse needs an equally well-trained rider.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+
+There are two kinds of "perfectly trained" saddle horses. One is the
+well-drilled cow of the riding-schools, fit only to give instruction
+to class after class of beginners, and who is safe because worked
+beyond his courage and endurance. The other is the School-horse, of
+perfect vigor and fine manners, who is obedient to the slightest whim
+of the clever rider, but who is so entire an enigma to the untrained
+one, that he is unable to ride him at even his quiet gaits.
+
+One of my friends in Touraine used in his youth to be a pupil of the
+famous Baucher. He once told me how, at the instigation of his
+classmates, he begged hard for many days to be allowed to ride the
+master's favorite horse, with whom he was apt to join his higher
+classes. My friend flattered himself that he could manage any horse,
+as he had long ridden under Baucher's instruction. As an example to
+the class, the master finally gave way. But the experiment was short.
+My friend soon found that he was so much less accomplished than the
+high-strung beast that he was utterly unable to manage or control him,
+much less to perform any of the School airs, and he was by no means
+sorry when his feat of equitation was terminated by so dangerous a
+rear that Baucher deemed it wise to come to the rescue. My friend's
+hands, though well-drilled, were so much less delicate than the
+horse's mouth, that the latter had at first mistaken some peculiar
+unsteadiness as the indication for a _pirouette_, to which he had
+obediently risen; but then, on feeling some additional unsteadiness of
+the reins, he had, in his uncertainty and confusion, reared quite
+beyond control. Yet under the master this horse's habit of obedience
+was so confirmed that he was apparently as moderate as any courageous
+horse should be, though actually of a hyper-nervous character.
+
+Nothing but time will make a thorough horseman; but a few months will
+make a tolerable horseman of any man who has strength, courage,
+intelligence, and good temper. If a man confines his ambition to a
+horse whom he can walk, trot, and canter on the road in an unbalanced
+manner, and who will jump an ordinary obstacle, so as to follow the
+hounds over easy country, it needs but little time and patience to
+break in both man and beast to this simple work. If a man wants what
+the High School calls a saddle beast, a full half year's daily
+training is essential for the horse, and to give this the man must
+have had quite thrice as much himself. Fix the standard at an 'alf and
+'alf 'unter and your requirements are soon met. Raise the standard of
+education to a horse well-balanced, who is always ready to be
+collected and always alert to his rider's wants and moods, and who can
+do any work well, and you need much more in both teacher, pupil, and
+rider. No horse can be alike perfect in the field and in the park. But
+the well-trained road horse can always hunt within the bounds
+prescribed by his condition, speed, and jumping ability; the finest
+hunter is apt to be either a nuisance on the road or too valuable for
+such daily work. It will not do to quote this as an invariable rule.
+But it certainly has few exceptions.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VII.
+   RISING AT A HURDLE.]
+
+Moreover, a hunter requires many weeks to be got into fine condition,
+and can then perform well not exceeding half a dozen days a month, and
+needs a long rest after the season. And it is not the average man who
+is happy enough to own a stable so full or to boast such ample leisure
+as to tax his horseflesh to so very slight an extent.
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+
+But what is that, Patroclus? Up goes your head, your lively ears
+pricked out, with an inquisitive low-voiced whinny. What is it you
+sniff upon the softly-moving air? Well, well, I know. That neigh and
+again a neigh betrays you. As sure as fate it is one of your
+stable-mates coming along the road. Perhaps our young friend Tom, upon
+his new purchase, Penelope. We will go and see, at all events. I never
+found you wrong, and I never knew your delicate nose to fail to sniff
+a friend before the eye could catch him, or your pleasant whinny fail
+to speak what you had guessed as well. Sure enough, there he comes and
+Nell has heard you too. Both Tom and she are out for the lesson which
+either gives the other. Now for a sociable tramp and chat in the
+company you like so well. And you and I will try to give Penelope and
+Master Tom a few hints which he has often asked, and of which all
+young horses and riders are apt to stand in need.
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+
+Good-morrow, Tom, and how are you, sleek Nelly? A fine day this for a
+tramp. Patroclus sniffed you a long way off, and now is happy to rub
+his nose on Nelly's neck, while she, forsooth, much as she likes the
+delicate attention, lays back her ears with a touch-me-not expression
+characteristic of the high-bred of her sex. A lucky dog are you to
+throw your leg across such a dainty bit of blood!
+
+You, Tom, are one of numberless young men who want to learn that which
+they have not the patience to study out of technical books and will
+hardly acquire in a riding-school; who, in other words, rather than
+learn on tan-bark, have preferred to purchase a horse and teach
+themselves. A man may do well in a school or on a horse hired in a
+school, and yet not know how to begin the training of a horse which
+has been only broken in to drive, as most of our American colts are,
+however eager to improve him for the saddle. Let us compare notes as
+we saunter along the road.
+
+Do not understand me to depreciate the value of riding-schools, nor
+the training which they inculcate. On the contrary, School-training
+carried far enough and properly given is just what I do advocate. But
+between the riding-school and School-riding, there is a great gulf
+fixed. The capital letter is advisedly used. A horse which has been
+given a good mouth, and has been taught as far as the volte and
+demi-volte, simple and reversed (though indeed the riding-school volte
+and the volte of the Haute Ecole are different things), certainly
+knows a fairish amount, and may be able to teach his rider much of
+what he knows. But riding in a school is not road-riding, although a
+school-horse may have profited well by his education. Leaping a school
+hurdle is not riding to hounds. A thoroughly good riding-school horse
+may be a very brute when in the park. Perfect manners within four
+walls may disappear so soon as the horse gets a clear mile ahead of
+him. Assuredly, it is well enough to learn the rudiments at a good
+riding-school. But if you ever want to become a thorough horseman and
+have equally good horses, study the art for yourself,--there is no
+mystery about it,--and learn what a horse should know and how to teach
+him. When you have done this, you will have a satisfactory saddle
+beast. If you expect a groom or a riding-school master to train your
+horses for you, you will not have a perfect mouth or good manners once
+in a hundred times. If the master is expert, he will be too busy to do
+your horses full justice short of an exorbitant honorarium. The groom
+is, as a rule, both ignorant and impatient, if not brutal.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+
+I know of no better foundation for a man to begin upon than the
+breaking-in to harness, which an American horse has usually received
+at the hands of an intelligent farmer, before he is brought to the
+city for sale. Starting with the horse, then, say at five years old,
+if you will learn how to give him his saddle education, and do it
+yourself, you will have, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a
+better saddle beast in six months than any groom can, or any
+riding-master is apt to make.
+
+There is somewhat of a tendency among the English, and much more among
+their American imitators, to decry as unnecessary the training of
+horses beyond a mouth somewhat short of leather and two or three easy
+road gaits; or, in hunters, the capacity to do well cross-country. But
+there is vastly more to be said on the side of High School training.
+By a three months' School course stubborn horses may be made
+tractable, dangerous horses rendered comparatively safe, uncomfortable
+brutes easy and reliable. Vices may be cured, stumbling may be made
+far less dangerous, if the habit cannot be eradicated, physical
+defects, unfitting a horse for saddle work, may often be overcome, and
+the general utility of the average horse vastly increased. All this,
+and much more, may be done, without touching upon the gain in ease to
+the rider, the pleasure to be derived when both man and beast are
+enabled to work in unison, the ability schooling gives to the weakest
+hand to hold the most high-strung horse, and the great variety of
+motions, speeds, and paces which may be taught to subserve the comfort
+and delight of the rider. Whoso will claim that the reader of the last
+French play enjoys as great a privilege and pleasure as the student of
+Hamlet, or that the day laborer is the equal of the skilled artisan,
+may deny the utility of schooling the horse for saddle work. No
+reference is here intended to be made to racing-stock, or to hunters
+kept as such. These stand in a class by themselves, requiring
+different aptitudes and treatment.
+
+An interesting proof of the general value of training has been
+recently developed in the Sixth U.S. Cavalry, stationed in New
+Mexico. In some of the troops the horses have been drilled to lie down
+and allow the men to fire over them,--a most valuable bit of
+discipline, peculiarly suited to Indian warfare. From the course of
+training necessary to bring about this end has resulted an unexpected
+but very natural docility in the horses, which are Californian
+bronchos, and a poor class of animal. Horses formerly considered
+dangerous have become quite gentle, and the entire condition of the
+command has been changed.
+
+So far as the belief goes that what are called the High School airs
+are unessential, it is easy to agree with the English opinion; but it
+is clear that the saddle horse should have far more training than he
+generally receives in England, and certainly than he receives here. It
+would seem that the better position lies midway between the Haute
+Ecole of the Continent and the half and half training of Great
+Britain.
+
+I do not mean to imply that there are not many beautifully trained
+saddle beasts in England. You see in Rotten Row, among a vast lot of
+brutes, probably more fine mounts than you will find in any other
+known resort of fashion, more than anywhere in the world outside of
+cavalry barracks. But the ordinary run of English hacks are taught to
+trot and canter, and there their training ceases. And so entirely is
+the education of horses left to grooms and riding-masters, that even
+the most elaborate English works on equitation, while they say that a
+horse should be taught to do thus and so, and give excellent
+instructions for riding a trained horse, afford no clue to the means
+of training. On the other hand, the High School manuals go far beyond
+what most men have patience to follow or a desire to learn, excellent
+as such an education may be for both horse and rider.
+
+I should be sorry indeed to be understood to underrate the
+horsemanship of England. I do not suppose that the excellence and
+universality of the equestrianism of Englishmen has any more sincere
+admirer than myself. But it is true that equitation as an art exists
+only among the military experts of the Old Country, and that the
+training of English horses is not carried beyond bare mediocrity among
+civilians for road work. For racing or hunting, the English system is
+perfect. The burden of my song is that we Americans shall not too
+closely imitate one single English style for all purposes. If we will
+truly imitate the best English methods, each in its appropriate place,
+and not pattern ourselves solely on the fox-hunting type, we shall do
+well enough; though in riding, as in all the arts, it is wisest, as
+well as most American, to look for models in every direction, and
+select the best to follow. What I wish to protest against is the
+dragging of the hunting-field into the park, and what I wish to urge
+is the higher education of--horses.
+
+One has only to go back to the thirties in England to find all the
+niceties of the Haute Ecole in full bloom. Not only the young swells,
+but the old politicians and the celebrated generals, used to go
+"titupping" down the Row, passaging, traversing, and piaffing to the
+admiration of all beholders. But the age which, in the race for the
+greatest good to the greatest number, has brought about simplicity in
+men's dress, and has reduced oratory to mere conversation; which has
+given the layman the right to abuse the church, and the costermonger
+the privilege of running down royalty, has changed all this. And as
+we have doubtless gone too far in many directions, in our desire to
+make all men free and equal, may we not have also gone too far in
+discarding some of the refinements of equestrianism? And is it not
+true, and pity, that the old-fashioned outward courtesy to women (for
+the courtesy of the heart, _Dieu merci_, always remains to us), whose
+decrease is unhappily so apparent to-day, and among the young is being
+supplanted by a mere _camaraderie_, is being swept from our midst
+by the same revulsion towards the extremely practical, which has
+discarded the beruffled formalities of our forebears and the high airs
+of equitation?
+
+We have, in the East, been so imbued with an imitative mania of the
+hunting style of England, that if one rides a horse on any other than
+an open, or indeed an all but disjointed walk, trot, or canter, he is
+thought to be putting on airs, in much the same measure as if he
+should dress in an unwarranted extreme of fashion upon the street. But
+if we are to ape the English, why not permit on Commonwealth
+Avenue--or by and by, we trust, the Park--what is daily seen in Rotten
+Row? No one who has tasted it can deny the exhilarating pleasure given
+you by a horse who is fresh enough to bound out of the road at any
+instant, who conveys to you in every stride that glorious sense of
+power which only a generous heart as well as supple muscles ever
+yield, and who is yet well enough schooled to rein down to a five-mile
+canter, with his haunches well under him; while, though he is burning
+with eagerness to plunge into a gallop, he curbs his ambition to your
+mood, and rocks you in the saddle with that gentle combination of
+strength and ease to which an uneducated gait is no more to be
+compared than Pierce's cider (good as it is in its place) to Mumm's
+Cordon Rouge. When one is riding for the pleasure of riding, why not
+use all the art which will add zest to your pleasure, rather than aim
+to give the impression that you are sauntering to cover, well ahead of
+time, and don't want to tire your horse, because you expect to tax him
+severely during the day with the Myopia beagles across the pretty
+country near Weld Farm?
+
+A celebrated English horseman says: "The park-hack should have, with
+perfection of graceful form, graceful action, an exquisite mouth, and
+perfect manners." "He must be intelligent, for without intelligence
+even with fine form and action he can never be pleasant to ride." "The
+head should be of the finest Oriental type; the neck well arched, but
+not too long." "The head should be carried in its right place, the
+neck gracefully arched. From the walk he should be able to bound into
+any pace, in perfectly balanced action, that the rider may require."
+And yet such a horse, though esteemed a prize in Rotten Row, would be
+all but tabooed on the streets of Boston, because he is not the type
+of a fine performer to hounds.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+
+There are so many manuals of the equestrian art from which any
+aspiring and patient student of equitation may derive the information
+requisite to become an expert horseman, that beyond a few hints for
+the benefit of those who, like you, Tom, know nothing and want to
+learn a little about the niceties of horseback work, it would be
+presumptuous to go. If a man desires to learn how to train a horse
+thoroughly, he must go back to Baucher, or to some of Baucher's
+pupils. All the larger works which cover training contain the elements
+of the Baucher system. The recent work of Colonel E. L. Anderson, late
+of General George H. Thomas' staff, written in England and published
+by David Douglas of Edinburgh, is a most excellent work.
+
+I have found as a rule that abstruse written explanations are very
+difficult to understand. In a recent excellent book on riding-school
+training (not School-riding mind you), though I know perfectly well
+what the riding-school volte and demi-volte are, as well as the
+School-volte and demi-volte, simple and reversed, I have read certain
+paragraphs dozens of times, without being able to make the words mean
+what the movement really is. Colonel Anderson's book is very clear,
+though it goes fully into the refinements of the art, except the
+quasi-circus tricks and airs, and from it, with time and patience, a
+man can make himself an accomplished rider and his steed equal to any
+work--outside the sawdust ring.
+
+But you, Tom, do not aspire to go so far in the training of Penelope.
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+
+You must not suppose that a man who teaches his horse all the airs of
+the Haute Ecole constantly uses them, any more than an eminent divine
+is always in the act of preaching, or a _prima donna assoluta_ is
+at all times warbling or practicing chromatic scales, when each ought
+to be engaged in the necessary but prosaic details of life. The best
+results of School-training lie in the ability of the horse and rider
+to do plain and simple work in the best manner. Because a horse can
+traverse or perform the Spanish trot, his rider need not necessarily
+make him traverse or passage past the window of his inamorata, while
+he himself salutes her with the air of a grandee of Aragon. For this
+would no doubt be bad style for a modern horseman in front of a Beacon
+Street mansion; though truly it might be eminently proper, as well as
+an interesting display of horsemanship, for the same rider to traverse
+past his commanding general while saluting at a review on Boston
+Common. Nor because a horse can perform the reversed pirouette with
+perfect exactness will a School-rider stop in the middle of a park
+road and parade the accomplishment. But this same reversed pirouette
+is for all that the foundation of everything that a well-trained horse
+should be able to do, and if he knows it, he is ready to make use of
+it at all times for the greater ease, safety, and pleasure of his
+master.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE VIII.
+   FLYING A HURDLE.]
+
+You may ask of what use it can ever be. Suppose you were riding with a
+lady, on her left,--which is the safe and proper, if not the
+fashionable side,--and her saddle should begin to turn, say toward
+you, as it is most apt to do. If your horse minds the indication of
+your leg, you can keep him so close to your companion's as to afford
+her suitable assistance, even to the extent of bodily lifting her
+clear of her saddle. If your horse is only half trained, you cannot,
+perhaps, bring him to the position where you want him in season to be
+of any service at all. Have you never seen a man who was trying to
+open a gate at which a score of impatient, not to say objurgatory,
+riders were waiting, while the field was disappearing over the hills
+and far away, and who could neither get at it nor out of the way,
+because his crack hunter didn't know what the pressure of his master's
+legs meant, and fought shy of the gate, while keeping others from
+coming near it? Have you never stood watching a race at the Country
+Club, with a rider beside you whose horse took up five times the space
+he was entitled to, because he could not be made to move sidewise? Has
+not every one seen occasions when even a little training would have
+been a boon both to himself and his neighbors?
+
+Talking of opening gates, one of the best bits of practice is to
+unlock, open, and ride through a common door and close and lock it
+after you without dismounting. Let it be a door opening towards you.
+If your horse will quickly get into and stand steady in the positions
+necessary to enable you to lean over and do all this handily at any
+door, gates will cease to have any terrors for you.
+
+Nor must you suppose that every schooled horse is of necessity kept in
+his most skilled form at all times. As few college graduates of twenty
+years' standing can construe an ode of Horace, though indeed they may
+understand the purport and read between the lines as they could not
+under the shadow of the elms of Alma Mater, so Patroclus, for
+instance, is by no means as clever in the intricate steps of his
+School performances as he was when fresh from his education. But the
+result is there; and for all the purposes of actual use in the saddle,
+the training he has had at all times bears its fruit.
+
+After this weary exordium of theory, Tom, for which my apologies, let
+us turn to a bit of practice.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+
+And first about the horse himself. If you buy one, do so under such
+advice as to get soundness, intelligence, courage, and good temper.
+Our American horses, unless spoiled, generally have all these in
+sufficient measure, and can be made everything of. You have been
+exceptionally fortunate in your purchase of Penelope. She is light
+gaited, not long and logy in her movements, and carries her own head.
+She has remarkable good looks, an inestimable quality after you get
+performance; but beware of the May-bird which has good looks alone.
+She is fifteen three, nearly as high at the rump, and with tail set on
+right there, fine-bred, but with barrel enough to weigh about a
+thousand and twenty pounds. She looks like a thoroughbred hunter, Tom,
+every inch of her. This is a good height and weight for you, who ride
+pretty heavy for a youngster, and are apt soon to run up to "twel'
+stun eight."
+
+You say Penelope is six years old. From five to eight is the best age,
+the nearer five the better. An old horse does not supple so readily.
+And she was well broken to harness? A good harness training is no harm
+to any horse, nor occasional use in light harness, whatever pride one
+may take in a horse which has never looked through a collar. In fact,
+many hunters in the Old Country are purposely used as tandem, or
+four-in-hand leaders during the summer, to give them light work, and
+bring them towards the season in firmer condition than if they had run
+at large and eaten their heads off. It is only the pulling or holding
+back of heavy weights which injures saddle gaits, and this because a
+saddle beast should be taught to keep his hind legs well under him,
+and remain in an elastic equilibrium; and dragging a load brings about
+the habit of extending the legs too much to the rear, while holding
+back gives a habit of sprawling and stiffening which is sadly at
+variance with a "collected" action.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+
+You ask about dress. Wear anything which is usual among riders. Enamel
+boots as now worn are convenient to the constant rider, as the mud
+does not injure them as it does cloth, and water at once cleanses
+them. But plain dark trousers, cut a mere trifle longer than you wear
+them on the street, and strapped under the feet, are excellent to ride
+in. If cut just right they are the neatest of all gear for park riding
+in good weather. The simpler your dress the better. Gentlemen to-day
+dress in boots when riding with ladies, and fashion, of course,
+justifies their use now as it did fifty years ago. But within half
+that term, in England, a man who would ride in boots with a pretty
+horsebreaker considered trousers _de rigeur_, if he was going to
+the Park with his wife or daughters.
+
+To saddle and bridle your horse, you must know your own needs and his
+disposition and mouth. But the English saddle and a bit and bridoon
+bridle, such as you have, are the simplest, and meet most wants,
+providing they fit the back and mouth.
+
+We do not have to suit such varying tempers and mouths in this country
+as they do abroad. Our horses are singularly tractable. It is rather a
+stunning thing to be mounted on the fashionable type of horse who
+"won't stand a curb, you know,"--and there are some such,--but, as a
+fact, ninety-nine American horses out of one hundred will work well in
+a port and bridoon bridle properly adjusted.
+
+Always buy good things. Cheap ones are dear at any price. Your saddle
+should fit so that when you are in it you can thrust your riding-whip
+under the pommel and to the cantle along the horse's backbone;
+otherwise you may get sore withers. The bits should hang in the mouth
+just above where a horse's tush grows. Penelope's sex, you see, Tom,
+precludes her having any.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+
+When you bought Penelope, she knew nothing of saddle work, and I told
+you to ride her a few times on a walk or a trot, anywhere and anyhow,
+so as to get used to her, and her used to you, before you began to
+teach her anything. She had presumably always been ridden to and from
+the blacksmith's shop, and worked kindly under saddle. You have got
+good legs, Tom, and any man with average legs can keep his seat after
+a fashion on a decently behaved horse. You were afraid you could not
+sit Penelope when you first bought her, and had not ridden for so long
+that you felt strange in the saddle. So I advised you to hire an old
+plug for a few rides until you were sure you would feel at home when
+you mounted her, meanwhile exercising her in harness. The better part
+of valor will always be discretion, now as in Falstaff's time, while
+the best of horses will get a bit nervous if kept long in a half-dark
+stable. Regular exercise is as essential to a horse as oil is to an
+engine, if either is to work smoothly.
+
+You ask me the proper way to mount. Let us stop while you dismount,
+and I will show you the usual way. It is simple work. Stand opposite
+Nelly's near shoulder, a foot or so away from her, and facing towards
+the cantle of your saddle. Gather up your snaffle reins just tight
+enough to feel, but not pull on her mouth, and seize a part of her
+mane with your left hand. Insert your toe in the stirrup, just as it
+hangs, using your right hand if necessary. Then seize the cantle of
+the saddle with your right hand, and springing from your right foot,
+without touching the horse's flank with your left toe, raise yourself
+into the stirrup, pause a moment, and then throw the leg across the
+horse, moving your right hand away in season. If you were shorter, you
+might have to spring from your foot before you could touch the cantle.
+As in everything else, there are other and perhaps better ways to
+mount, and pages can be written upon the niceties of each method. But
+the above suffices for the nonce. You can choose your own fashion when
+you have tried them all.
+
+An active youngster, like yourself, should be able to vault into the
+saddle without putting the left foot into the stirrup at all. In all
+Continental gymnasiums, this is one of the usual exercises, on a
+horse-block with imitation saddle, and is an excellent practice. By
+all means learn it.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+
+You do not seem to hold your reins handily, Tom. Of all the methods of
+holding reins I prefer the old cross-country way of a generation back,
+still recommended, I was pleased to see, in the very excellent article
+"Horse" of the edition of the "Cyclopaedia Britannica" now publishing,
+and I fancy yet much in vogue.
+
+The School method is different; but the School requires that the curb
+and snaffle shall be used for different indications or "aids" to
+convey the rider's meaning to the horse, and not at the same time. In
+ordinary saddle work it is generally convenient to employ the reins
+together. Gather your reins up with me. The near curb outside little
+finger, near snaffle between little and third fingers, off snaffle
+between third and middle, off curb between middle and index, all four
+gathered flat above index and held in place by thumb, knuckles up. Or
+easier, take up your snaffle by the buckle and pass the third finger
+of left hand between its reins; then take up the curb and pass the
+little, third, and middle fingers between its reins. The snaffle
+reins, you see, are thus inside the curb reins, each is easily reached
+and distinguished and you can shift hold from left hand to right, or
+_vice versa_, more readily than in any other way, by merely placing
+one hand, with fingers spread to grasp the reins, in front of the
+other. By having the loop of each rein hanging separate so that the
+free hand can seize it quickly, either can be shortened or lengthened
+at will, or they may be so together. Moreover, this hold affords the
+easiest method of changing from one to both hands and back.
+
+For if you insert your right little finger between the off reins, and
+your third finger inside the snaffle rein, and draw the off reins from
+your left hand slightly, you have a very handy means of using both
+hands, with the additional value that you can either drop the right
+reins by easing the length of the left ones to equalize the pressure
+on the horse's mouth; or by grasping the left reins with right middle
+finger over snaffle and first finger over curb, you can shift to the
+right hand entirely. When in this position you can again use the left
+hand by inserting its fingers in front of the right one and closing
+upon the reins, as already indicated. In fact, without lengthening the
+near reins, but merely by placing the right hand in any convenient way
+on the off ones, you may be ready to use both hands in entirely proper
+fashion. And in this day of two-handed riding, it is advisable to be
+able to follow the fashion quickly.
+
+For School airs, this also affords an easy way of using separately
+curb and snaffle, as is often necessary.
+
+If you are riding with single reins, you will place them on either
+side of third or little finger, or embracing little, third, and middle
+fingers and up under thumb in similar manner. A single rein may be
+held in many ways.
+
+With all other double-rein methods, except the one described, you have
+to alter the position of reins in shifting from hand to hand. With
+this one the order of reins and fingers remains the same.
+
+Any other system of holding the reins which you prefer will do as
+well, if you become expert at it. I have tried them all, from
+Baucher's down, and have always reverted to what was shown me thirty
+odd years ago.
+
+Your curb chain should be looser than it is, Tom. A horse needing a
+stiff curb is unsuited to any but an expert rider, and must have a
+great many splendid qualities to make up for this really bad one. Some
+people like a mouth they can hold on by, but they do not make fine
+horsemen. Never ride on your horse's mouth, or, as they say, "ride
+your bridle." Many men like a hunter who "takes hold of you," but this
+won't do on the road, if you seek comfort or want a drilled horse. You
+see that Nelly keeps jerking at the curb. Let out a link, at least. An
+untrained horse seeks relief from the curb by poking out his nose, the
+trained one by giving way to it and arching his neck. It is better at
+first only to ride on your snaffle rein, leaving your curb rein
+reasonably loose; or else you may use only a snaffle bit and single
+rein for a while. But unless you very early learn that your reins are
+to afford no support whatever to your seat, you will never be apt to
+learn it. Don't use a martingale unless your horse is a star-gazer, or
+else tosses his head so as to be able to strike you. It tends to make
+you lean upon the rein and confines your horse's head.
+
+
+
+
+XXX.
+
+
+You have now been out a half-dozen times with your new purchase, Tom,
+and you have managed to get along much to your own satisfaction. You
+have neither slipped off, nor has Penelope misbehaved. But you are
+intelligent enough to see that there is something beyond this for you
+and her to learn. I do not know how ambitious you are. If you want to
+make Nelly's forehand and croup so supple that you can train her into
+the finest gaits and action, you must go to work on the stable floor
+with an hour a day at least of patient teaching, for a number of
+weeks. For this purpose you must have a manual of instruction, such as
+I have shown you, and quite a little stock of leisure and particularly
+of good temper.
+
+The ordinary English trainer thinks that a good mouth may be made in
+two weeks, by strapping a colt's reins to his surcingle for an hour or
+two daily, and by longeing with a cavesson. But excellent as cavesson
+work may be, this means alone will by no means produce the quality of
+mouth which the Baucher method will make, or which you should aim to
+give to Nelly.
+
+Still I know that you have but limited time, Tom, and that you want
+your daily ride to educate both yourself and your mare. This can be
+accomplished after a fashion; but it is only what the primary school
+is to the university,--good, as far as it goes. The trouble with
+beginning to supple a horse's neck when in motion is that you ask him
+to start doing two things at once, that is, move forward at command
+and obey your reins, and he will be apt to be somewhat confused. He
+will not as readily understand what you want him to do, as if standing
+quiet and undisturbed.
+
+With plenty of courage, Tom, Penelope seems to have a very gentle
+disposition. Almost all of our American horses have. They are not as
+apt to be spoiled in the breaking-in as they are abroad. And I fancy
+she is intelligent. You should have no difficulty in training her, and
+in teaching her a habit of obedience which she will never forget.
+
+It is all but an axiom that an unspoiled horse will surely do what he
+knows you want him to do, unless he is afraid to do it, or unless, as
+is generally the case, you yourself are at fault. The difficulty lies
+in making him understand you. Remember this, and keep your patience
+always. If a horse is roguish, as he often will be, it is only a
+moment's play, and he will at once get over it, unless you make it
+worse by unnecessary fault-finding. I generally laugh at a horse
+instead of scolding him. He understands the tone if not the words, and
+it turns aside the occasion for a fight or for punishment.
+
+Never invite a fight with a horse. Avoid it whenever you can
+accomplish your end by other means. Never decline it when it must
+come. But either win the fight or reckon on having a spoiled horse on
+your hands, who will never thoroughly obey you.
+
+And remember that a horse who obeys from fear is never as tractable,
+safe, or pleasant as one who has been taught by gentle means, and with
+whom the habit of obeying goes hand in hand with love for his master
+and pleasure in serving him. I do not refer to those creatures which
+have already been made equine brutes by the stupidity or cruelty of
+human brutes. One of these may occasionally need more peremptory
+treatment, but under proper tuition even such an one needs it rarely.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE IX.
+   CLEAN ABOVE IT.]
+
+
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+
+Let us have a trot, and see how Penelope moves, and how you sit. You,
+Tom, will take your pace from me. There is nothing more unhorsemanlike
+and annoying than for a rider to keep half a horse's length in front
+of his companion. Your stirrup should be even with mine. A gentleman
+can be a foot or two in front of a lady, for safety and convenience,
+but men should ride as they would walk, all but arm in arm. Now you
+can see the effects of education. Penelope insists on trotting a
+twelve-mile gait, and no wonder, for she has such fine, open action,
+that a sharp gait is less effort to her than a slow one. On the
+contrary, I, who, as the senior, have the right to give the pace, am
+satisfied with two-thirds that speed; and Patroclus, who, as you well
+know, can easily out-trot, or, I fancy, out-run your mare, and would
+dearly like to try it, yields himself to my mood without an ounce of
+pull or friction. Look at his reins. They are quite loose. Now look at
+yours. Nelly is pulling and fretting for all she is worth, while you
+are working your passage. Two miles like that will take three out of
+her and five out of you. She will fume herself into a lather soon,
+while Pat will not have turned a hair. She certainly is a candidate
+for training. You appear to need all the strength of your arms to pull
+her down to a walk, whereas a simple turn of the wrist, or a
+low-spoken word, should suffice.
+
+By the way, always indulge in the habit of talking to your horse. You
+have no idea of how much he will understand. And if he is in the habit
+of listening for your words, and of paying heed to what you say, he
+will be vastly more obedient as well as companionable. Patroclus and I
+often settle very knotty questions on the road. We think we helped
+elect Cleveland. And I must confess that occasionally a passer-by
+fancies that I am talking to myself, whereas, if he but knew the
+meaning of Patroclus' lively ears, he would see what a capital comrade
+I have, and one, moreover, who, like one's favorite book, is never
+impertinent enough to answer back, or flout you with excessive wisdom.
+It is certainly a very pleasant study to see how many words or phrases
+a horse can learn the meaning of, and act intelligently when he hears
+them.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+
+What, then, shall you do first in the way of education? Well, let us
+see. As Nelly has been broken to harness, she can probably only walk
+and trot. You, yourself, seem to stick fairly well to the saddle. But
+how about your own position? Your leathers are a trifle long. They
+should be of just such length that, when you are in the middle of the
+saddle, on your seat, not your crotch, with the ball of your foot in
+the stirrups, your feet are almost parallel with the ground, the heel
+a trifle lower than the toes. Your toes are below your heels, you see.
+You should be able to get your heels well down when you settle into
+your saddle. The old rule of having the stirrups just touch the
+ankle-bone when the foot is hanging is not a bad one. The arm measure
+is unreliable, and physical conformation, as well as different backed
+horses, often require, even in a sound man, odd lengths of leathers.
+
+You should not attempt to ride with your feet "home" until you can
+keep your stirrup under the ball of your foot without losing it,
+whatever your horse may do; and when you do ride "home," you should
+occasionally change back to the ball of your foot, so as to keep in
+practice. Moreover, you can train a horse much more easily, riding
+with only the ball of the foot in the stirrup, for you can use your
+legs to better advantage. My disability obliges me to ride "home" at
+all times, and I have always found it much more difficult to teach a
+horse the right leg indications than the left. I have to employ my
+whip not infrequently, in lieu of my leg. Your stirrup should be
+larger and heavier, for safety. I don't like your fine, small
+stirrups; and your saddle should have spring bars, which you should
+always keep from rusting out of good working order. They have saved
+many a man's collar-bone.
+
+Be in the habit of using your knees and thighs alone for grip, though
+the closer you clasp the saddle without getting your legs _around_ the
+horse, the better. In the leap, or with a plunging horse, you may use
+the upper part of the calf, or as much more as your spurs will allow
+you to use. But of all equestrian horrors the worst is the too common
+habit of constantly using the calves instead of the knees to clasp the
+saddle-flaps. To such an extent is this often carried by a tyro (and
+no man gets beyond this stage who does it), that you can see an angle
+of daylight between the points where his thigh and calf touch the
+saddle, showing that his knee, which ought to be his main and constant
+hold, does not touch the saddle at all. The stirrup-leathers,
+especially if heavy, as they should be, often hurt the knee, if you
+are new to the saddle, and perhaps are the main inducement to this
+execrable habit. But you must either get your knees hardened, or else
+give up the saddle. Keep a steady lookout for this. You will never
+ride if you don't use your knees. If you do use them properly, your
+feet will look after themselves. Ride with the flat of the thigh and
+the knee-bone at all times close to the saddle.
+
+Sit erect, but avoid rigidity. It is good practice to sit close, that
+is, without rising, on a slow jog-trot. Let us try. Sit perfectly
+straight and take the bumping. On a jog-trot, it is an unpardonable
+sin to lean forward at all. You will find that shortly it does not
+bump you so much, and by and by it will not at all. But don't lean
+back either. That is the country bumpkin's prerogative. Nelly is
+evidently easy enough, only she has not been taught to curb her
+ambition. Nothing shakes a man into the saddle better than this same
+jog-trot. Nothing is more absurd than the attempt to rise when the
+horse is only jogging, or, as it were, the attempt to make your horse
+begin to trot by beginning to rise. It looks like an attempt to lift
+yourself up by your boot straps. Teach him some other indication to
+start a trot. It is useless to rise unless a horse is going at least a
+six-mile gait.
+
+Some School-riders taboo the jog, but all the cavalry of the world use
+it; it is the homeward gait of the tired hunter, and it does teach a
+man a good, easy, safe seat. It is true that a horse who won't walk at
+speed, but who falls from a slow walk into a jog whenever you urge
+him, is a nuisance. Moreover, the uneducated jog is neither a
+fashionable nor a desirable gait. But a schooled jog, which the horse
+does under your direction and control, is quite another thing, and a
+jog greatly relieves a tired horse. It seems to be unjustly tabooed.
+Unless, then, you are ultra-fashionable, make a habit of jogging now
+and then. By this I mean jogging with your horse "collected," so that
+you have not an ounce of hold on his mouth, and he is still under your
+absolute control, your seat meanwhile being firm and unshaken. But
+never let the horse jog of his own motion. That may spoil his walk.
+Make him jog only when you want him to do so, and when walking, do not
+let him fall into a jog unbidden. The jog I mean should be almost a
+parade gait; too slow to rise to, but still perfect in action, and so
+poised that from it your horse can bound into any faster gait at word.
+
+Your hands are too high. They want to be but a couple of inches above
+the pommel, better lower than higher. A man whose reins wear out the
+pigskin on his pommel is all right. A horse who carries his head high
+needs lower hands. Some low-headed horses require the hands to be held
+a bit higher to stimulate the forehand.
+
+It is difficult to say thus much without saying a great deal more; for
+this is but a hint of what is essential to correct such a physical
+defect as a low-carried head. But what I tell you will whet your
+appetite for a thorough knowledge, and this you will find in the books
+of Baucher's followers. The use of snaffle and curb, each for its best
+purpose, is very delicate.
+
+Let me again repeat, of all things never hang on your horse's mouth.
+You may have to do so on Penelope's, or rather Penelope may hang on
+your hands, till you get her suppled, but you must try to do that
+soon. You don't want to be a "three legged rider." If you cannot learn
+to ride at any gait and speed smoothly and well, with your reins so
+loose that you might as well not have them in your hands, you will
+never do anything but "ride the bridle."
+
+This applies to your seat, not to Penelope. It is not wise habitually
+to ride with reins too loose; you should always feel your horse's
+mouth. But you can feel it without a tight rein. Good driving horses
+often pull. A good riding horse should never do so.
+
+Nelly seems to be sure-footed. If she is apt to stumble, sell her.
+Your neck is worth more than your pocket. By School-training and its
+consequent habit of keeping the hind legs well under him, a stumbler
+will learn instinctively to bring up the succeeding hind foot to the
+support of the yielding fore foot, so as to save himself a fall; but
+you don't want an imperfect horse, Tom. If Nelly can trot without
+stumbling, it is excellent practice for you to tie the reins in a knot
+on her neck, and to ride along the road without touching them. When
+you feel as secure this way as any other, your seat is strong. You do
+not want to do this _en evidence_. But get off on the country roads
+and practice it. This is one advantage of a careful riding-master and
+a good school; a pupil is taught the seat apart from and before the
+uses of the reins.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+
+As I think you have already mastered all that I have told you, you may
+begin to teach Penelope a bit. But remember that, as you are both
+intelligent, she will be teaching you at the same time. I notice that
+you have to use two hands to guide your mare, and I presume you want
+to learn some better way, for however necessary two hands may
+occasionally be, a horse must at times be managed by one. There are
+three methods of guiding a horse under saddle. The simplest, and the
+one requiring the least education, is the same which you are using,
+and which is the common way of driving, by holding the rein or reins
+of each side in one hand, and by pulling rein on the side you wish
+Nelly to turn to. It is possible to guide this way with one hand by a
+suitable turn of the wrist, but unless the horse is well collected, as
+few of our horses nowadays are, it is a poor reliance in any unusual
+case. The next method is guiding by the neck, by which the horse is
+made to turn to the right if you draw the rein across or lay it upon
+the left side of his neck, and _vice versa_. The third method combines
+the two others, and the horse obeys either indication. It requires the
+highest art in man and beast, and is superb in results when learned.
+The animal may be guided by the bit with the reins held in one hand,
+applying the pressure by the turn of the wrist, or may be turned by
+the neck while the bit is used to lighten one or other side. But this
+requires a hand and mouth of equal delicacy, and a horse always in a
+state of equilibrium.
+
+You will need only the first two to begin with, and Nelly already
+knows the first.
+
+Most horses now and then require you to use both hands, and
+School-riding calls for their use in the more difficult feats. But an
+agreeable saddle beast should guide by the neck readily at all times.
+Stonehenge calls this a "highly desirable accomplishment," but it is
+really only the beginning of the alphabet of the horse's education;
+and indeed in the School airs, though both hands be used, the forehand
+is constantly thrown to one or the other side by the neck pressure,
+the direct tension of the rein being used to give the horse quite a
+different indication at the same moment.
+
+Moreover, you will not always be able to devote two hands to Nelly.
+You may need one of them for something else. It would be embarrassing
+not to be able to use your whip or crop, or to button your glove, or
+to take off your hat, and at the same time to turn a corner or avoid a
+team. I have often ridden with people who so entirely relied upon both
+hands, that they had to draw rein for so simple a thing as the use of
+their handkerchief, lest their horse should fly the track while their
+right hand was so engaged. And while I am to a certain extent an
+advocate for the use of two hands, I cannot agree with the habit of
+the day of so constantly employing two that the horse and rider both
+lose the power of doing satisfactory work with one.
+
+By all means teach Nelly to guide by the neck. When you have done
+this, you may resort to both hands again whenever you desire. And
+the habit of using both hands is certainly more apt to keep your
+shoulders, and hence your seat straight. But a horse who cannot be
+guided with one hand under all but the most exceptional conditions is
+not fit for saddle work on the road. In the more intricate paces of
+the School, indeed, the soldier uses but one hand; and though often
+more delicate hints can be imparted to a horse's mind by two, yet all
+except the greatest performances of the _manege_ can be accomplished
+with one, and a horse who is unable to rehearse perfectly all the road
+gaits and movements with the indications of one hand and two heels is
+sadly lacking in the knowledge he should boast.
+
+You very naturally ask how this is to be taught. It is by no means
+difficult. Have you never noticed a groom riding a horse in a halter?
+Any steady horse can be so ridden. The halter rope is usually on the
+left side of the neck because the man has it in his hand when he jumps
+on, and he guides the horse by a pull on the halter rope if he wants
+him to turn to the left, and by laying the rope upon and pulling it
+across the neck pretty well up if he wants him to turn to the right.
+Now you will notice that if you hold the reins far up on Nelly's neck,
+half way from withers to ears, and pull them across the left (near)
+side of her neck, she will, after a little uncertainty, be apt to turn
+to the right, although the pull is on the left side of the bit. Try it
+and see. There,--she has done it, after some hesitation. And she did
+it because she felt that her head was being forced to the right and
+she very naturally followed it. The reverse will occur if you will
+pull the reins across the right (off) side of the neck. Some horses
+seize this idea very quickly, and it is only a matter of practice to
+keep them doing the same thing as you gradually bring the reins
+farther and farther down the neck till they lie where they should be,
+near the withers. If Nelly will thus catch the idea, a week or ten
+days will teach her a good deal, and in a month she will guide fairly
+well by the neck;--after which, practice makes perfect. If she had
+not seemed to catch the idea, and had turned the other way, it would
+have been because the pull on the bit impressed her mind rather than
+the pressure on the neck acting in the opposite way. Under such
+circumstances you should, when you press the rein on the near side of
+her neck, take hold of the off rein also and force her to turn to the
+right, trying to make the neck pressure a little more marked than that
+on the bit. A horse quickly learns to appreciate the difference
+between the direct pull of the rein on the bit and the indirect one
+made across the neck. None of the neat movements of the _manege_ can
+be executed unless a horse has learned absolutely to distinguish
+between an indication to turn, and one which is meant to lighten one
+side in order to prepare for a School movement, or to enable him to
+lead or exhibit pronounced action with that side.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE X.
+   TAKING-OFF AT WATER.]
+
+At first you had perhaps better teach Penelope to guide only one way
+by the neck, using the rein alone for the other turn. But you can
+determine this by her intelligence. If there is any place where you
+can ride in an irregular circle or quadrangle, you can, after Nelly
+gets used to turning in a certain direction at the corners, press the
+reins on the opposite side of her neck as she is about to turn, so
+that she may get to associate this pressure with the movement in
+the direction away from it. This is the way horses learn in a
+riding-school. Or if she is going towards home and knows the corners
+she has to turn, do not let her make them of her own accord, but hold
+her away from them until you give her the neck pressure. Or you can
+zig-zag along the road if you are in a quiet place where people will
+not think that you are _toque_, or that your mare has the staggers. It
+will thus not be long before Nelly gets the idea, and the mere idea,
+once caught, is quickly worked into a habit. Sometimes I have got a
+horse to guide passably well by the neck in a day. Oftener, it takes a
+week or two, while delicacy comes by very slow degrees.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+
+When you have got Nelly to the point where she guides fairly well by
+the neck, what next?
+
+It is evident that the muscles of your mare's neck are rather rigid,
+for she carries it straight, though her crest is well curved. From
+this rigidity springs that resistance to the bit which she so
+constantly shows. A neck which arches easily means, as a rule,
+obedience to it. It is extremely rare that a horse will arch his neck,
+except when very fresh, so as to bring his mouth to the yielding
+position and keep it there, of his own volition; and then he is apt to
+pull on your hands. You must not suppose that an arched neck means
+that the horseman is worrying his beast to make him appear proud or
+prance for the purpose of showing off. It is precisely this which a
+good horseman never does. He always uses his bits gently. It is
+cruelty, as well as ruin to the horse's mouth, to hold him by the curb
+until his neck tires, and he leans upon it, held suspended by the
+equal torture of the chain and the aching muscles. A horse never
+should pull on a curb. If your hands are light, the curb rein may be
+loose and still the horse's head be in its proper position, that is,
+about perpendicular. The well-trained horse, without the slightest
+effort, arches his neck to the curb or snaffle alike, and keeps it so.
+It is only when his rider releases it, or chooses to let him "have his
+head" that he takes it. Often, in fact, a horse will not do so when
+you give him the chance. Patroclus here will get tired out, certainly
+completely tire me out, long before his bit becomes irksome. When
+trotting, or when galloping across the fields or in deep snow, I am
+often apt to let him carry his head as he chooses on account of the
+change or the extra exertion. But with his well-suppled neck I always
+feel certain that the slightest intimation of the bit will bring his
+head in place instead of meeting resistance. And he generally seems to
+prefer to bring his head well into the bit, so, as it were, to
+establish agreeable relations with you. I often notice that he feels
+unsteady if I give him his head too much. And when tired, he seems to
+like the encouragement given by light and lively hands all the more.
+
+The first thing, then, to do is to get Penelope's neck suppled. This
+means that the naturally rigid muscles of the neck shall be by proper
+exercises made so supple as to allow the mare to bring her head to the
+position where there can be a constant "give and take" between your
+hands and her mouth. The usual outward sign of such suppleness is an
+arched neck, though as occasionally an habitual puller will arch his
+neck naturally, this is not an infallible sign. And some horses,
+especially thoroughbreds, however good their wind, will roar if you
+too quickly bring their heads in. This is because the wind-pipe of
+such horses is compressed too much by arching the neck. Thoroughbreds
+on the turf are wont to stick their noses out while running, because
+this affords them the best breathing power at very high speed. This
+habit becomes hereditary, and among them there are not a few who
+cannot readily be brought in by the bit. Sometimes, except as a feat,
+you can never supple such necks. Oftener, it only needs more time and
+patience,--in other words a slower process. A limber-necked
+thoroughbred has, however, the most delightful of mouths, except for
+the fact that he seems occasionally to draw or yield almost a yard of
+rein, owing to the length of his neck, and your hands have to be
+watched accordingly. If he has such a neck, the only safety, if he is
+high-strung, is never to let him beyond the hand.
+
+The result of the suppling of the neck is a soft mouth under all
+conditions. How shall you begin to supple Nelly's neck, you ask,
+without the long process of the Schools?
+
+You cannot perfectly, but you may partially do this under saddle.
+Whenever you are on a walk you may, as a habit, let your horse have
+his head, and encourage him to keep at his best gait. A dull walker is
+a nuisance. A little motion of the hands or heels and an occasional
+word will keep him lively and at work, and get him into the habit of
+walking well, if he has enough ambition. The School-rider keeps his
+horse "collected" on the walk at all times, and though the steps are
+thus shortened, they become quicker and more springy, and the speed is
+not diminished. I do either way, as the mood takes me, for though I
+incline to the method of the School-riders, I do not think that it
+hurts a horse to have entire freedom now and then.
+
+Some amblers are slow walkers, but the five-mile amble takes the place
+of the rapid walk, and is often more agreeable. Few horses walk more
+than three and a half miles an hour. A four-mile walk is a good one.
+Exceptionally, you may reach the ideal five miles. I once knew a horse
+in Ohio who walked (and not a running walk either, but a square "heel
+and toe" walk) six miles in an hour, on wagers. But our confab, Tom,
+often gets too diffuse. Let us go on with our lesson.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+
+Here we are quietly walking along the road. Suppose you draw up the
+reins a bit, the curb somewhat the more. Nelly will at once bring up
+her head, and very naturally stick out her nose in the endeavor to
+avoid the pressure of the curb chain. At the same time, as you see,
+she will shorten her steps. Don't jerk or worry her, but still exert a
+gentle pressure on the curb, and keep up a slight vibrating movement
+of the hands, speaking to her kindly. In a moment or two, she will
+arch her neck, and the bit will hang loosely in her mouth. There, you
+see, her nose comes down, and a handsome head and neck she has! Now
+pat her, and speak caressingly to her, and after a few seconds release
+her head. When these exercises are done on the stable floor, the use
+of the snaffle will accomplish the same result, and this is very
+desirable. But if you begin these flexions on the road you must use
+the curb, because Nelly now understands the snaffle to be for another
+purpose. The use of the curb is apt to lower a horse's head, and with
+some horses too much. The snaffle may be employed to correct this low
+carriage, but this use of it involves more than I can explain to you
+now. If Nelly's head gets too low, raise your hands a bit.
+
+Try it over again, and each time prolong the period of holding her
+head in poise. But never hold it so long that her neck will ache and
+she begin to lean upon the bit. If she should do so before you release
+her head, play gently with the rein for an instant to get her back to
+the soft mouthing of the bit, caress her, and then release her head.
+This is on the principle that you should always have your way with a
+horse, and not he his. And kindness alone accomplishes this much more
+speedily and certainly than severity. If the occasion ever comes when
+you cannot have your way with Nelly, give a new turn to the matter by
+attracting her attention to something else, so as not to leave on her
+mind the impression that she has resisted you.
+
+Notice two things, Tom, while Nelly is thus champing her bit. She has
+an almost imperceptible hold of your hands and her gait is shorter and
+more elastic. This has the effect of a semi-poised position, from
+which she can more readily move into any desired gait than from the
+extended looseness of the simple walk. This is one step towards what
+horsemen call being "in hand," or "collected;" and grooms, "pulled
+together," though indeed the "pulling together" of the groom but very
+distantly approaches the fine poise of the Schools.
+
+Of all means of destroying a good mouth, to allow the horse to lean
+upon the curb is the surest. Avoid this by all means. But so long as
+Nell will bring in her head and play with the bit, keep her doing so
+at intervals. After a week or two she will be ready to walk quite a
+stretch with her head in position, and you will both of you have
+gained something in the way of schooling her mouth and your hands. You
+can then try her on a trot, and if you can keep your seat without
+holding on by the reins, she will learn to do the same thing at this
+gait too, and later at the canter and the gallop. But unless your own
+seat is firm and your hands are light, you will only be doing her
+future education an injury. Every twitch on her sensitive mouth,
+occasioned by an insecure seat or jerky hands, will be so much lost.
+Moreover, your curb chain must neither be too long nor too short. If
+too long, Nelly will not bring down her head at all. If too short, it
+will worry her unnecessarily. You can judge of it by her willingness
+gradually to accustom herself to it without jerking her head or
+resisting it, and without lolling her tongue.
+
+This suppling of Nelly's neck which you will give her on her daily
+ride is only of the muscles governing the direct up and down motion of
+the head and neck. You are not overcoming the lateral rigidities. This
+requires stable exercises. If you have leisure for these (and you very
+likely will make some when you find the strides in comfort and
+elegance Nelly is making), you will buy one of the manuals I have told
+you about. What you have taught her, however, is excellent so far as
+it goes, and is time well employed. It will serve its purpose upon the
+road, if it does not suffice for the more perfect education.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+
+The next step will be for you to try to supple the croup or
+hind-quarters of your mare. The two things can go on together, though
+it is well to get the forehand fairly suppled before beginning on the
+croup. The flexions of the croup are fully as important, if not more
+so, than those of the forehand, and in their proper teaching lies the
+root of your success. If you wear spurs, you should be absolutely sure
+you will never touch Nelly with them by accident. Spurs need not to be
+severe in any event. It is uselessly cruel to bring the blood, except
+in a race, where every ounce of exertion must be called for. Spurs in
+training or riding should never be used for punishment. They will be
+too essential in conveying your meaning to Penelope for you to throw
+away their value in bad temper. The horse should learn that the spur
+is an encouragement and an indication of your wishes, and should be
+taught to receive its attack without wincing or anger.
+
+The old habit of the _manege_ was to force all the weight of the
+horse, by the power of a severe curb bit, back upon his haunches, and
+oblige him to execute all the airs in a position all but poised upon
+his hind legs. The modern dispensation endeavors to effect better
+results by teaching the animal to be constantly balanced upon all
+four legs, and, by having his forces properly distributed, to be in
+a condition to move any of them at the will of his rider in any
+direction, without disturbing this balance. Moreover, the element of
+severity has been eliminated from training altogether.
+
+Suppose, then, that you are walking Nelly and are holding her head in
+poise. Now bring your legs gently together, so as to slightly touch
+her sides. You will see that she at once moves quickly towards the
+bit. Here she must find herself held in check by it. The result of the
+two conditions will be that she will get her hind legs somewhat more
+under her than usual. It is just this act, properly done, which
+produces the equilibrium desired. When a horse is what is termed
+"collected," or "in hand," he has merely brought his hind feet well
+under him, and has yielded his mouth to your hands in such a way that
+he can quickly respond to your demands. This he cannot do when he is
+in an open or sprawling position.
+
+It were better to teach Nelly this gathering of the hind legs under
+her by certain preliminary exercises on foot; but you can by patient
+trial while mounted accomplish a great part of the same result. And
+between bit to restrain her ardor and spur to keep her well up to it,
+the mare will get accustomed to a position of equilibrium from which
+she can, when taught, instantly take any gait, advance any foot, or
+perform any duty required. She will be really in the condition of a
+fine scale which a hair's weight will instantly affect.
+
+Do not suppose that bit and spur are to be used harshly. On the
+contrary, the bit ought to play in her mouth loosely, and with the
+trained horse the barest motion of the leg towards the body suffices.
+The spur need very rarely touch her flank. The delicacy of perception
+of the schooled horse is often amazing. But the co-efficient of a
+balanced horse is a rider with firm seat and light hands. Either is
+powerless without the other. Moreover, a generous and intelligent
+beast, reasonably treated, learns the duty prescribed to him without
+the least friction. To respond to a kindly rider's wants seems to be a
+pride and a pleasure to him instead of a task.
+
+Among the most agreeable incidents of horse-training is the evident
+delight which the horse takes in learning, the appreciation with which
+he receives your praise, and the confiding willingness with which he
+performs airs requiring the greatest exertion, and often a painful
+application of the spur, without any idea of resistance or resentment,
+even when his strength, endurance, intelligence, and good temper are
+taxed to the severest degree. I have sometimes wondered at a patience,
+which I myself could never have exhibited, in a creature which could
+so readily refuse the demands made upon him, as well as at the
+manifest pleasure he will take in the simple reward of a gentle word.
+
+There is much difference in the nomenclature of horse-training. Unless
+one needs to be specific, as in describing the methods of the Haute
+Ecole, "in hand" and "collected" are frequently used interchangeably.
+But they should really be distinct in meaning, "in hand" being the
+response to the bit, "collected," the response to bit and legs, and
+"in poise," a very close position of equilibrium, preceding the most
+difficult movements of the School.
+
+Now, in order to get Penelope accustomed to respond to the pressure of
+the legs, you must practice bringing your legs towards her flanks
+while her head is well poised, at frequent intervals. Whenever she
+responds by bringing her hind legs under her--and you will notice when
+she does so by her greater elasticity and more active movement--speak
+a good word to her, and keep her gathered in this way only so long as
+she can comfortably remain so, gradually prolonging the terms during
+which you hold her thus "collected." You will find that her step will
+soon become lighter and the speed of her response to your own
+movements a great contrast to the sluggishness of the horse moving his
+natural gait in the saddle. Her carriage will begin to show the same
+equilibrium in which the practiced fencer stands "in guard," or more
+properly, it will show that splendid action of the horse at liberty
+which he never exhibits in the restraint of the saddle, except when
+trained.
+
+Whoever has watched a half-dozen fine horses just turned loose from
+the stall into a pretty paddock, will have noticed that, in their
+delighted bounds and curvetings, each one will perform his part with a
+wonderful grace, ease, and elegance of action. You may see the
+passage, piaffer, and Spanish trot, and even the passage backwards,
+done by the untrained horse of his own playful volition, urged thereto
+solely by the exuberance of his spirits. Under saddle he will not do
+this, unless taught by the methods of the School. But so taught, he
+will perform all these and more, with readiness and evident
+satisfaction to himself.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE XI.
+   DOING IT HANDILY.]
+
+I must again impress upon you, Tom, that for perfect success, even in
+little things, you will need vastly more careful training than this;
+and that what I am discussing with you is but a very partial
+substitute for the higher education. I am indeed sorry to feel tied
+down to such simple instruction. But I want to tell you just enough to
+lead you to experiment for yourself, and to catch sufficient of the
+fascination of the art to study it thoroughly. I am, however, anxious
+that you should by no means understand me to say that you can, by any
+such simple means as I shall have detailed to you, perfect the
+education of your mare. You can improve her present condition vastly,
+and make her light and handy compared to what she naturally is. But
+the best results involve far other work.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII.
+
+
+You tell me that Nelly can only trot and walk, and you want to teach
+her the canter and hand-gallop. Many horses will naturally fall into a
+canter if you shake the reins; but some who come of trotting stock
+will not do so without considerable effort; and still such a horse is
+often the best one to buy. Now the easiest way to get Nelly into a
+canter, if she persists in trotting, is to push her beyond her speed,
+for which purpose you should select a soft piece of ground. So soon as
+she has broken into a gallop, unless she has been trained to settle
+back into a trot, you can readily slow up without changing her gait.
+If it has been attempted to train her as a trotter, you will have
+harder work to do this. But there is a little vibrating movement of
+the hands, sometimes called "lifting," which tends to keep a horse
+cantering, just as a steady pull keeps him trotting. This movement is
+in the little what the galloping action of a horse is in the great.
+The hands move very slightly forward and upward, and pass back again
+on an under line.
+
+Apparently, Nelly has been broken in the usual way, for she trots
+naturally on a steady rein or on the snaffle. Now, you will find that
+a moving rein or the curb is apt to break her trot, and make her do
+something else,--either prance, or trot with high unsettled steps, or
+canter. It is for your own hands, when she gets to the canter, to hold
+her there. This may take you some time, but you can certainly do it by
+repeated trials. Having accomplished it, you may, between curb bit and
+spurs, both gently used, mind you, gradually teach her to carry her
+head properly at this pace, and get her haunches well under her; and
+it will give you pleasure to notice how much more natural it is for
+her to come "in hand" than on the trot. As the canter is the natural
+gait of the horse, you will find Nelly soon keep to it if she
+understands that you so desire. But remember that you should canter or
+gallop habitually only on soft ground. Hard roads soon injure the fore
+feet and fetlock joints if a horse is constantly cantered or galloped
+upon them, because the strides are longer and the weight comes down
+harder, and always more upon the leading fore foot than upon the
+other. Moreover, the canter with the hind legs well gathered is apt to
+be somewhat of a strain to the houghs of the horse unless it is
+properly--rhythmically--performed, and unless the animal is gradually
+broken in by proper flexions.
+
+But to canter is one thing. You have yet to teach Penelope to canter
+on either foot at will, leading off with left or right and changing
+foot in motion. This is quite another matter, and you will find that
+it will take some time and a vast deal of patience in both of you.
+
+Let us suppose that you have brought Nell down to a fairly slow
+canter. Until you can, without effort to her or you, rein her down to
+quite a slow one, she does not know the rudiments of the gait. To
+canter properly, she must, without resistance, pull, or fret, come
+down to a canter quite as slow as a fast walk, even slower, and not
+show the least attempt to fall into a jog; all this while so poised
+that she can bound into a gallop at the next stride. Any plug can run.
+Few of the saddle horses you meet on the road seem to canter slowly,
+and yet it is one of the most essential of gaits and a great relief
+from a constant trot, especially for a lady.
+
+It may perhaps look more sportsmanlike--I don't like to use the word
+"horsey"--for a lady always to trot; but no lady, apart from this,
+begins to look as well upon the trot as when sitting the properly
+timed park canter of a fresh and handsome horse. Moreover, it requires
+vastly less art to ride the trot usually seen with us than to bring a
+high-couraged horse down to a slow parade canter and keep him there,
+not to dilate upon the gloriously invigorating and luxurious feeling
+of this gait when executed in its perfection.
+
+Some lazy horses find that they can canter as easily as walk and
+nearly as slowly, but this disjointed, lax-muscled progress is a very
+different performance from the proud, open action of the generous
+horse, whose stride is so vigorous that you feel as if he had wings,
+but who curbs his ardor to your desires, and with the pressure of a
+silken thread on the bit will canter a five-mile gait.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII.
+
+
+You have probably noticed that Nelly sometimes canters with one
+shoulder forward and sometimes with the other. Almost all sound horses
+will change lead of their own accord, but not knowing why. When a
+horse shies at a strange object, or hops over anything in his path, or
+gets on new ground, or changes direction, he will often do this. If a
+horse does not frequently change, it is apt to be on account of an
+unsound foot, hough, or shoulder, which makes painful or difficult the
+lead he avoids. But occasionally a sound horse will always lead with
+the same leg, until taught to change. For a lady the canter is
+generally easier with the right shoulder leading, and some horses are
+much easier with one than the other lead. In fact, on the trot, many
+horses are easier when you rise with the off than when you rise with
+the near foot, or _vice versa_; and some writers have said that a
+horse leads with one or other foot in trotting. But as the trot should
+be a square and even gait, the peculiarity in question is owing to
+excess of muscular action in one leg and not to anything approaching
+the lead in the canter or the gallop.
+
+It is possible to teach a horse to start with either or to change lead
+in the canter without more flexing of the croup than you can give him
+on the road; but it is worth your while to put Nelly through some
+exercises which I will explain to you. It will save time in the end.
+Their eventual object is so to supple the croup as to render the
+hind-quarters subject to the rider's will, and absolutely under the
+control of the horse as directed by him. The flexions of the croup are
+in reality more important than those of the forehand. Unless a horse's
+hind-quarters are well under him and so thoroughly suppled as to obey
+the slightest indication of the rider's leg, he is lacking in the
+greatest element of his education, if he is to be made a School-horse.
+At the same time a supple croup and a rigid forehand cannot work in
+unison. Both should be elastic in equal degree.
+
+For the purpose of beginning the croup flexions, you can best use the
+stable floor, or other convenient spot, say after mounting as you
+start, or before dismounting as you return from your ride, or, better,
+both. And this is what you should do.
+
+Suppose you are standing on the stable floor, mounted. Any other place
+will do, but you want to be where you are quite undisturbed. Bring
+Nelly in hand by gathering up the reins quietly, so as not to disturb
+her equanimity or her position. Perhaps you had better hold the reins
+in both hands for these exercises. At all times, indeed, it is well
+that a horse should be kept acquainted with the feel of the two hands.
+In many respects, and for many purposes, I am an advocate of two hands
+in riding. Do not misunderstand me on this point. My plea is for such
+education that one hand may suffice for all needs, when the other can
+be better employed than with the reins; but I myself often use both my
+hands, perhaps even half the time.
+
+Nelly being collected, gently press one foot towards her flank, if
+need be till the spur touches her. She will naturally move away from
+it by a side step with her hind feet. You should have kept her head so
+well in hand that she will not have moved her fore feet. So soon as
+she makes this one side step, stop and caress her. Try once more with
+the same foot. Same result, and you will again reward her with a kind
+word. Do not at first try to make her take two steps consecutively. If
+you do so, she may, having failed to satisfy you with one step, and
+imagining that you want something else, try to step towards the spur
+instead of away from it, and you will have thus lost some ground. A
+horse argues very simply, and if one course does not seem to comply
+with his rider's will, he almost always and at once tries the other.
+After a few days, you will find that Nelly will side step very nicely,
+one or two steps at a time, and before long she will do so in either
+direction. You cannot, however, consider her as perfect until she can
+handily complete the circle, with the opposite fore foot immovably
+planted, in either direction at will, and without disturbing her
+equilibrium. But this is much harder to do, and if you propose to give
+Nelly a college education you must first qualify yourself as
+professor.
+
+You should now at the same time test how well you have taught Penelope
+to guide by the neck. If you will use the pressure of your legs
+judiciously, so as to prevent her from moving her hind feet at all,
+you should be able to describe part of a circle about them by such use
+of the reins as to make her side step with the fore feet. When she can
+take two or three steps with fore or hind feet to either side quickly,
+and at will, keeping the hind or fore feet in place, you have made a
+very substantial gain in her training.
+
+There can be, of course, only one pivot foot. It is the one opposite
+the direction in which you are moving the croup or forehand. But to
+teach Nelly to use the proper pivot foot you must begin much more
+carefully, and it is perhaps not necessary, if you aspire only to
+train her for road use, to be so particular.
+
+Properly speaking, you ought about this time to give Nelly a little
+side suppling of the neck, so as to make the parts respond readily to
+your will. This is done first on foot, by gently turning the
+mouthpiece of the curb bit in a horizontal plane, so as to force her
+head to either side and make her arch her neck, without allowing her
+to shift feet. Later, it is done by drawing one curb rein over her
+neck so as to bring her head sidewise down towards the shoulder, while
+steadying her with a less marked pressure on the other rein. To do
+this properly, the Baucher diagrams, or a longer description, would be
+useful. When the neck is in this exercise perfectly flexed, she will
+be looking to the rear. With some little practice Nelly will thus
+readily, at call, bring her head way round to the saddle-flap, with
+neck arched, and mouthing her bit. Later still, you can practice this
+flexion mounted, by holding both reins, and pulling a trifle more
+strongly on one curb than on the other, and steadying her by voice and
+leg to prevent her from moving. This exercise will make it physically
+easier for Nelly by and by to respond to your demands, for her neck
+will be flexible enough for her to hold her head in any desired
+position without undue effort. And the same thing can be done in
+motion, if this is not too rapid.
+
+As already said, the circular movement described (termed a pirouette
+about the hind, and a reversed pirouette about the fore feet) should
+be made on one absolutely unmoved fore or hind foot as pivot. For,
+plainly, both feet cannot act as one pivot without twisting the legs.
+This pirouette is really a "low pirouette," the pirouette proper being
+a movement by the horse poised on his hind legs alone, describing the
+circle with fore legs in the air, which is a vastly finer performance.
+
+It will suffice for you, though, Tom, if Nelly will make the
+pirouette, simple or reversed, without substantially shifting the
+position of the two pivot feet. But you must remember that if you
+start with a half-and-half education, it is more difficult to perfect
+the training than if you start in a more systematic manner; and I do
+not pretend that these are the proper, but only easy methods.
+
+It is by the union of the side steps of forehand and croup, the former
+always a trifle in advance, that a horse is taught to "traverse," that
+is, to move sideways at a walk, trot, or gallop. But the traverse is a
+School gait rarely needed on the road, and a horse may be trained to
+entire usefulness without being able to traverse, _as a gait_, if
+he can willingly make a few quick side steps in either direction.
+Moreover, to properly traverse, a horse should be taught the passage,
+which is a gait in which the feet are raised much higher, by the
+inducement of the spur and the indication of the rein, than the horse
+would naturally lift them. The passage is put to use in very many of
+the airs of the _manege_.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX.
+
+
+To revert now to the canter, for which the pirouettes are
+preparations. There are two or three ways of teaching a horse to lead
+with either foot, but the best way is to begin with the flexions which
+I have just described to you, and the more perfect these are, the
+easier and quicker the progress, and the more satisfactory the result.
+
+If you have not patience to wade through all these, you may try the
+following plan, which is founded on the natural instincts and balance
+of the horse, but for the execution of which, with your load on his
+back, he has not been prepared.
+
+A horse will lead with the off foot most readily if he is going round
+a circle to the right; with the near foot, if circling to the left. In
+other words, the foot which will quickest sustain his weight against
+the centrifugal motion is the one which is planted first, that is, the
+foot not leading. The way a horse is taught in a riding-school to lead
+with either foot is by associating the proper indication to do so with
+the lead he naturally takes as he canters around the right or left of
+the ring, or changes direction in what are called the voltes in
+teaching pupils. But I have seen many horses who would do this very
+readily inside school walls, who were very stupid or refractory on a
+straight bit of road. I think this is universally true, in fact, and
+that is why I recommend road teaching whenever practicable.
+
+It cannot be alleged that every horse will always use the proper foot
+in the lead. A horse unused to cantering with a rider's weight upon
+his back may do all kinds of awkward things which at liberty, or when
+trained, he will not attempt to do. But the above way of leading is
+the natural thing, and that which a horse generally does when at
+liberty; and it is not hard to induce him to do what comes naturally
+to him, nor by practice to strengthen the habit.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE XII.
+   A TWENTY-FOOT LEAP.]
+
+The action of the legs of the leading side is higher in the canter and
+the gallop than that of the other pair. A horse is said to be "false"
+in his canter or gallop if he turns with a wrong lead, that is, if he
+turns to the right until he alters his lead to the right shoulder,
+unless he is already so leading, or _vice versa_. This is true of
+sharp turns, which may indeed cause a dangerous fall if "false," but a
+horse can safely make turns with a long radius and good footing
+without altering his lead, and this is often convenient to be done.
+But if the ground is slippery, it is a risk to turn a sharp corner
+with a wrong lead. I have often seen men punish a horse for slipping
+at such a turn, when it was solely owing to the false lead that he did
+so; and the false lead was either the lack of education in the horse
+or the rider, or both. Sometimes a horse will be leading with one
+shoulder, and following with the alternate hind leg. He is then said
+to be "disunited," or "disconnected." The leg or spur, applied on
+either side to bring him to the proper lead, will soon correct this
+error, as it is equally disagreeable to horse and rider, and it is a
+relief to both to change it.
+
+Now, acting on this theory of the horse having a natural lead, suppose
+you canter Nelly about in a circle small enough to induce her to use
+the proper leg in the lead. A circle fifty feet in diameter will do.
+At the same time apply a constant but slight pressure of your leg on
+the side opposite her leading shoulder. She will by and by associate
+this pressure with what you want her to do. Stick to one direction
+long enough, say three or four days, to impress the idea on her mind,
+and she will be rather apt to keep it in memory. Then try the other
+direction with opposite pressure, and you will gradually get the
+opposite result.
+
+Again, a horse canters best with off shoulder leading, if moving along
+the side of a hill which slopes up to his right, and _vice versa_.
+Thus, if you keep on the left side of most roads, where the grade
+slopes towards the gutter, you will find that Nelly will lead best
+with her right shoulder. This is for the same reason. She wishes to
+plant quickest that foot which will keep her from slipping down hill.
+If she is on the right of the road she will lead best with the left
+shoulder. She will, perhaps, not do this as readily as on the circle,
+but she will be apt to do it. If you should watch a horse in the
+circus ring, you would notice that this is apparently not true. But
+the slanting path of the circus ring is really not on a slant at all,
+when we calculate the centrifugal force of the motion around so small
+a circle. It is as if a horse were moving on a horizontal plane, for
+he is really perpendicular to the slanting path; and its tipped
+position is governed by the same mathematical rule as the road-bed of
+a railroad curve.
+
+You may utilize this slanting instinct also in the same fashion as the
+circle first mentioned for getting the elementary idea into Nelly's
+head that pressure on one side means leading with the opposite
+shoulder. Moreover, the side of the road, which is the slope most
+handy, has the additional advantage of being generally the softest
+cantering ground.
+
+There is an upward play of the rein, which can be explained only to
+the student who has advanced some distance in the art, which tends to
+lighten, or invigorate one or the other side of a horse, and thus
+induce him, coupled with other means, to make the long strides, that
+is, lead, with the lightened or active shoulder. But you, Tom, will
+not be able to use this until you have devoted more time to study as
+well as practice.
+
+After you have tried the circle to your satisfaction, try cantering in
+a figure eight of sufficient size. Nelly will thereby learn
+instinctively to change step as she comes to the loops. You can
+probably find a field or lawn somewhere on which you can practice.
+Out-of-door instruction is always preferable to riding-school work, if
+equally good, both for man and beast. And such instruction as these
+hints are intended to enable you to give, will teach you more than the
+average riding-school ever does. I by no means refer to those schools
+which teach equitation as a true art, instead of merely drilling you
+in the bald elements of riding. Nor is there any better place to give
+Nelly proper instruction than a riding-school, unless it be the lawn
+or field. What you teach Nelly out-of-doors you will find her much
+more willing and able to put into use on the road than if she had gone
+through the same drill in a school.
+
+
+
+
+XL.
+
+
+The above is, of course, the crudest of methods compared with the best
+School systems, but if you have taught Nelly her side steps (or
+pirouettes), as I have described them to you, or in other words have
+to a certain extent suppled her forehand and croup by the proper
+flexions, you can start in a more certain way. You must not expect to
+succeed at once. Success depends upon Nelly's intelligence, your own
+patience, and the delicate perceptions of both. I assume that you will
+have already taught Nelly to canter whenever you wish her to do so,
+though she may have been selecting her own lead. Now, you can, of
+course, see, when you want her to canter, that if you keep her head
+straight with the reins and press upon her near flank with your leg,
+she will throw her croup away from your leg, and be for the moment out
+of the true line of advance. This is bad for the walk or the trot, but
+just what you want to induce her to start the canter with the off
+shoulder leading. For if you can keep her in this position until she
+takes the canter, she will be more apt to lead off with her right
+shoulder, because the forcing of her croup to the right has also
+pushed this shoulder in advance of the other. If at the same time she
+is traveling along a slope which runs up from her right, say the left
+side of the road, or on a circle turning to the right, she will be all
+the more apt to do this. You can aid her also by a little marked play
+with the right rein, which will tend to enliven that side, and by
+giving it increased action, aid in bringing it forward, even if not
+done with entire expertness.
+
+A number of English writers state that the proper indication for the
+lead with the right foot is a tap of the whip on the right side, but
+this appears to be lacking in good theory, and might prove very
+confusing to a horse, despite the fact that the animal can be made to
+learn anything as an indication. A tap of the whip under the right
+elbow would be more consistent with the horse's action, although it is
+quite possible, as a feat, to teach a horse to lead with the off
+shoulder by pulling his off ear, or his tail, for the matter of that.
+But indications are best when they tally with a sound theory of the
+horse's motions.
+
+Reverse causes will induce Nelly to lead with the left shoulder. Not,
+of course, at once. For though she will do it in a circle or figure
+eight, on the road she may still be often confused. It requires much
+time and practice to make her perfect. But once Nelly catches the
+idea, you can surely succeed in impressing it on her for good and all,
+and though she will blunder often enough, she will in the end learn it
+thoroughly.
+
+When you start out to make Nelly lead off with one shoulder, be sure
+you accomplish your object. If she leads off with the other, stop her
+at once, and try again. Always succeed with a horse in what you
+undertake. If you cannot, on any given day, make Nelly lead right, do
+not let her canter at all, but keep her on a trot or a walk. It
+requires a number of successful trials to make it plain to the
+intelligence of a horse that he has done what you want, and is to do
+it again on similar indications. It is, therefore, well for him not to
+have to learn too many new lessons at once.
+
+
+
+
+XLI.
+
+
+To change lead in motion is harder for the horse and rider both to
+learn, and there is no better test of a well-trained horse than an
+immediate and balanced change of lead on call. A canter is a gait
+somewhat similar to the gallop, though the feet move and come down in
+different progression. But at certain times one or more of the four
+feet are successively sustaining the weight, and there is an interval
+when the horse is unsupported in the air, or has only one hind foot
+upon the ground. It is this last period which the horse chooses in
+which to change his lead. Now, suppose you are cantering with Nelly's
+right shoulder leading, and want her to change to the left. If you
+press upon her right flank with your leg, she will want to shift her
+croup to the left. This will incline her naturally to turn her head to
+the right, which inclination you must counteract with as little motion
+as possible of the reins. Nelly will thus find that she is cantering
+uncomfortably to herself, and if you will keep along in this way for a
+few strides, she will very likely shift to her left lead, because the
+constraint of your leg and the bit are irksome while she continues to
+lead with the right, and she will try what she can do to get rid of
+the restraint. She certainly will change after a while, particularly
+if aided by the circle or slope, even if she does it because she does
+not know what else to do. And by rousing or lightening the left
+shoulder by a play of the left rein you will materially aid the
+change. So soon as she has changed, reward her by a few words, and
+canter along on the new lead.
+
+The reverse accomplishes a similar result. It will probably take you
+many weeks to bring about all this. If you do it in a few weeks, you
+will succeed far beyond the average. But the process of teaching an
+intelligent horse, if you are patient, is as pleasant as the result of
+the lessons is agreeable, after they have had their due effect.
+
+A horse should be so well trained as to be ready to turn with a
+"false" lead if you ask him to do so. Left to himself, he should take
+the proper lead at the moment of turning. But he must obey you to the
+extent of doing what he would otherwise not do, and should properly
+not do, if you give him the indication. And this without becoming
+confused, so as to fail to do the proper thing on the next occasion.
+
+Though I by no means hold up Patroclus to-day as a model performer of
+School-paces, which I am perhaps too lazy to keep him as perfect in as
+I ought to do, the results of good training still remain. I sometimes,
+when out of sight, canter him quite a stretch, say quarter of a mile,
+changing lead, first every fourth stride, then every third stride,
+then every second, in regular rhythmic succession. If Patroclus fails
+to do this feat with exactness, I can always recognize my own error in
+too late an indication, rather than his in obeying it. It is possible
+to canter him very slowly with a change of lead at every stride, but
+such work is very exhausting to a horse, and I have not often done it.
+This latter feat must be done so slowly that the gait is properly not
+a canter; but Patroclus can perform the true canter, and change at
+every second step readily for several hundred yards.
+
+There are undoubtedly many well-trained horses in Boston, very likely
+more highly trained ones than I am aware of; but certainly the great
+majority of saddle beasts possess scarcely the rudiments of an
+education. This seems to be a pity, when it requires so little labor
+to give them one, if their owners will but learn how to do so.
+
+Not long ago a friend of mine, and an old rider too, was exhibiting to
+me a recently purchased horse, for whom he had paid a high price,
+because he was said to have come fresh from the hands of some noted
+trainer. The horse would fall into a canter with his own lead readily
+enough, but when, after a struggle of some hundred yards, he was made
+to lead with the foot selected by the rider, it was thought to be a
+triumph of cleverness. Is not this a common case? And would it not be
+well to rectify it?
+
+
+
+
+XLII.
+
+
+There are a number of little exercises which you ought by no means to
+omit, as, for instance, practicing Nelly in backing quickly, handily,
+and without losing her balance. This is only to be done by slow
+degrees, a few steps at a time, and by generously rewarding progress
+as she increases her number of backward steps. Never force her. Use
+persuasion only. In doing this, watch that she is always well poised.
+Otherwise she cannot back properly. You must also teach her, by that
+use of the reins and legs which you will already have learned, to
+change direction as she backs, as easily as she does in moving
+forward. These necessary things she has already been crudely taught in
+her breaking-in.
+
+If Nelly has the pride of a courageous horse, as I should judge by her
+bright eye that she had, she will be fairly greedy of kind words and
+caresses. And I trust you will never allow her to become afraid of the
+whip. You should be able to switch your whip all about her face
+without her heeding it. Reward goes much farther than punishment. The
+latter needs very rarely to be resorted to. I have never used it,
+barring in isolated cases, but what afterwards I was ashamed of it,
+and not infrequently I have made most sincere apology and amends to
+the sufferer. But the harm done has always been hard to eradicate. An
+impatient man quickly loses his standing in the confidence and
+affection of an intelligent horse. In your training, a whip will be
+much more useful than a crop. The latter is but a badge of fashion, of
+absolutely no use on the road, and of but little in education.
+
+Now, Tom, I have suggested to you a number of very crude rules for
+training your mare. Like Captain Jack Bunsby I ought to add that "the
+bearings of this observation lays in the application on it." But by
+the patient aid of even these simple methods, intelligently used, you
+will have given Nelly an easy mouth, you will have suppled her
+forehand and croup, and you will have taught her to canter with either
+foot in the lead.
+
+Everything which I have told you can be put to use by a lady as well
+as a man. But a lady needs preliminary teaching in a school, because
+it is neither pleasant nor safe for her to be on the road quite
+untaught. But having acquired a seat and some little control of her
+horse, she can apply all the rules I have given you, using her whip as
+a man would use his right leg. The short skirts of the day enable her
+to use her left leg as readily as you can.
+
+The gallop comes of itself, and needs but care that your own position
+is good and does not lose firmness or interfere with your hands.
+Better sit down to the gallop. The jockey habit of galloping in the
+stirrups is rarely of use except as a means of changing your own seat
+and sometimes of easing your horse across ploughed fields or bad
+ground. It is never proper for the road.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+
+Having got thus far, you will surely want to teach the mare to jump
+and yourself to sit her firmly when she does so. Perhaps you may
+choose to defer the tedious processes described and go at jumping at
+once.
+
+If you think you can sit a fairish jump, probably the best plan is to
+follow the hounds in a quiet way some day, if it happens to be in
+their season. A great many horses will jump imitatively when in
+company and do pretty clean simple work. There is a bit of a chance
+for a blunder this way, because a horse unused to jumping cannot gauge
+his work and may come down. But by taking him slowly at his fences,
+perhaps at a walk, there is comparatively little risk. It is the
+exceptional horse who will jump well in cold blood, like Patroclus in
+the illustrations. But any horse can be taught to do so in a measure,
+and no horse can be called a hunter unless he will do so cleverly.
+
+If you first go out with the hounds, there is some danger that if your
+seat is insecure you will drag Nelly back from her leaps, and worry or
+confuse her so much that you will lose a deal of ground. Though,
+indeed, she will be less readily spoiled if she gets excited by the
+chase, than if put at equally high jumps as a lesson, because her
+eagerness to keep up with the other horses will exceed her annoyance
+at your unsteady hands.
+
+I would advise you, on the whole, to have a little practice in some
+quiet spot all by yourself. A horse who will only jump in company is
+far from perfect in this accomplishment. A well-trained horse should
+jump a three and a half foot gate or an eight foot ditch at any time
+as willingly as start into a sharp gallop.
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE XIII.
+   ABOUT TO LAND.]
+
+I assume that Nelly knows nothing of leaping. Wander off into the
+fields somewhere. Find a place where there is a gate or fence of
+several bars. Let all these down but one or two,--leaving enough in
+height for Nelly to step over if she lifts her feet way up,--say
+twenty inches. A fallen log is an excellent thing to try on. Make her
+cross and recross the bar or log a number of times, by persuasion
+only. Any horse will step over a high bar if you stand him in front of
+it and encourage him. Don't scold or strike her. Nothing disheartens
+the learning or courageous horse so much.
+
+From the days of Xenophon down, any one who loses his temper in
+training a horse, or uses any but gentle means, violates the precept,
+practice, and experience of all successful horsemen.
+
+"But never to approach a horse in a fit of anger is the one great
+precept and maxim of conduct in regard to the treatment of a horse;
+for anger is destitute of forethought, and consequently often does
+that of which the agent must necessarily repent." Xen. Horsemanship,
+vi. 13.
+
+Curiously enough, in spite of this rule, Xenophon advocates the use of
+the whip and spur in teaching a horse to leap--the gravest error, I
+think, of this exceedingly sensible horseman.
+
+It has been said that you should not make a horse keep on jumping the
+same obstacle, because he sees no reason for doing it, and feels that
+you are making a fool of him. But my experience is that a horse likes
+to jump at any well-known thing, if he has been petted or rewarded for
+cleverly clearing it. A horse who has been given a bit of sugar or
+apple after jumping is far from feeling that he has been made a fool
+of, even if he is jumped a dozen times over the same obstacle. And
+every horse goes with double confidence at a thing he has leaped
+before. It is the horse who knows the country who makes easiest
+headway and quickest after hounds, and is oftenest in at the death. At
+the same time it is true that a horse can be spoiled by leaping him in
+cold blood much more easily than when in the company of many others.
+And it is also true that if a horse is ridden at different things in
+succession, if such can be readily found, he learns to take whatever
+comes in his path more handily than if he is confined to only one
+jump. Still, after once learning to jump any one obstacle, the lesson
+is easily carried farther by riding across simple bits of country.
+
+As soon as Nelly walks right over the bar without hesitation or any
+pause longer than enough to lift her feet, walk or jog her up to it a
+bit faster. She will soon find that it is less exertion for her to
+rise to it with both feet at once, and hop over it, than to lift her
+feet so high. As soon as she has caught this idea, reward her with a
+nibble of something, for she has made her first step in learning the
+lesson. A little sugar, salt, or a bit of apple, or a green leaf or
+two, or a bunch of grass you will find to be wonderful incentives.
+
+Don't raise the bar too soon or too much. When Nelly is quite familiar
+with the small jump at a slow gait, trot her at it. Most horses can
+jump well from a trot. In fact some of the best riders always trot up
+to timber. It is a temptation of Providence to try to fly a stiff bit
+of timber, unless you have a wonderful jumper who knows you well, or
+unless you are at the beginning of a run, when your horse is in his
+best condition; and Providence should never be tempted except when a
+considerable result lies trembling in the balance.
+
+When Nelly takes the obstacle cleverly from a trot, canter her at it,
+and gradually she will take pleasure in hopping over it, particularly
+if she now and then gets a tidbit at the other side. Moreover, this
+tidbit will accomplish another object. It will teach your mare not to
+rush as soon as she clears her fence, which a horse who is whipped at
+his jumps almost always does. By insensible degrees and within a few
+weeks you will get Nelly to jump three feet high, or even three and a
+half. If she can do this in cold blood, "clane and cliver," she will
+be able to do anything within reason which you need when in company.
+You can try her in just the same way at small, then at large ditches,
+always keeping to the familiar place and rewarding success, until
+Nelly learns what jumping in the abstract is. After that, try her at
+all kinds of things in moderation.
+
+There is more than a grain of good sense in the idea that a horse does
+not want to be made to jump unnecessarily. And it is true that some
+horses get stubborn if always put at the same obstacle without an
+object. But if a horse associates praise and reward with jumping, he
+will be ready for it at any proper time. You should, however, avoid
+making a tired horse leap except when it is absolutely necessary. Let
+him do this work when he is fresh. You of course know that a really
+stanch horse is usually fresher after five or ten miles of average
+speed than at the start. The best of stayers are often quite dull
+until they get their legs stretched and their bodies emptied. This
+particularly applies to aged horses. And perhaps the very worst time
+to jump a horse is when he is just out of the stall.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV.
+
+
+How about holding the reins in the jump? Well, now we come to
+debatable ground. To-day's fashion tells you to use both hands. The
+old-fashioned English habit, as well as the necessary habit of the
+soldier and of all other riders who have work to do, is to use the
+bridle hand alone. I prefer the latter habit. Only a half-trained
+horse needs both hands. A good jumper ought to want to jump, not have
+to be steered and shoved over an obstacle. I am willing to allow that
+some brutes have to be so steered; but if a horse is well-taught,
+likes to leap, and can be safely ridden at an obstacle with one hand,
+why use two? If a man is astride a horse who must be steered, let him
+use both. If he can teach his horse to be true at his jumps with but
+one hand, both will have gained a point, and be one hand better off.
+For two hands may be used at any time, if called for.
+
+A sound and vigorous horse, who has been properly taught to jump, will
+take anything which he feels that his rider himself means to go over.
+If you want utterly to spoil your Nelly, ride her at things you
+yourself feel uncertain about clearing. She will quickly find out your
+mood from your hands. The only rule for keeping your mare true to her
+work is never to ride at anything which you have not made up your mind
+to carry her over. Be true to yourself in your ambition to jump, and
+Nelly will be true to you. It is usually the horses that have been
+fooled by uncertain hearts and tremulous hands who fail you at the
+critical moment, or who have to be steered over their fences. So long
+as your horse has jumping ability, and you have a "warm heart and a
+cool head," you can go anywhere.
+
+A generation ago no one was ashamed of even letting his right arm fly
+up now and then, for it was not in olden times the extremity of "bad
+form" which it is now pronounced to be. Look over Doyle or Leech for
+proof of this. But the main argument against the unnecessary use of
+two hands is that you may absolutely require your right hand for
+something else, while it certainly argues a poor training or character
+in a horse to make it a _sine qua non_ for you to employ both at
+every leap. Of what avail would a trooper be in a charge, with his
+horse bounding over dismounted companions, dead, or, worse still,
+wounded and struggling horses, and all manner of obstacles, if he had
+to steer his horse with his sword-hand? And not infrequently you will
+find, in the peaceful charge after harmless Reynard, that your right
+arm is better employed in fending off blows from stray branches or in
+opening a passage through a close cover, than in holding on to one of
+your reins. Have you never been through a bullfinch where you must
+part the clustering branches if you were to scramble through and avoid
+the wondrous wise man's bramble-bush experience? Have you never felt
+your hat going at the instant your horse was taking off? Have you
+never seen just the neatest place in the hedge obstructed by a single
+branch, which your right arm could thrust aside as you flew over? Have
+you never, O my hunting brother, had to make an awfully sudden grab at
+your horse's mane?
+
+And while I am happy to defer to the opinion of some of the most noted
+steeple-chasers and first-flight men in this controversy, when they
+call single-hand jumping a hateful practice, and ascribe to it half
+the bad habits of the hunter and the crooked seats of the rider, I am
+satisfied to look at the portraits of such wonderful equestrians as
+Captain Percy Williams, or Tom Clarke, huntsman of the Old Berkshire,
+and a dozen others that could be instanced, all using the bridle hand
+alone, and some of them even forgetting that it is "bad form" to let
+the right elbow leave the side. Bad form, forsooth! These portraits
+would scarcely have been thus painted if the habit had met the
+disapproval of the celebrated horsemen in question.
+
+So far as you are concerned, Tom, you will learn while Penelope is
+learning. Use your snaffle bit alone. A man needs light hands to jump
+with a curb, or else his horse must have a leather mouth. Whenever
+Nelly has made up her mind to jump, let her have her head. Don't try
+to tell her when to take off. Leave that to her, and don't flurry her
+while she is making up her mind when and where to do it. Leave that to
+the very experienced rider. If she is jumping from a stand, or slow
+trot, you can say a word of encouragement to her, but by no means do
+so at a gallop, when within a stride or two of the jump. Be ready,
+however, to draw rein sufficient to give her some support as soon as
+she has landed.
+
+You will find that when Nelly jumps, the strong and quick extension of
+her hind legs will throw you into the air and forward. To obviate this
+settle down in your seat, in other words, "curl your sitting bones
+under you," use your legs (not your heels), and lean back just enough
+not to get thrown from your saddle. Don't try any of the fancy ideas
+about first leaning forward to ease her croup while she takes off. You
+will come a cropper if you do. Lean back. It will not take you long to
+find out how much, and the leaning forward will come of itself.
+
+
+
+
+XLV.
+
+
+It is often alleged by old cross-country riders that the best hunters
+land on their hind feet. Many no doubt land so quickly and so well
+gathered that they give to the eye the appearance of so doing. But I
+doubt if photography would really show them to land other than on one
+fore foot, instantly relieved by the second one planted a short stride
+farther on, and followed by the corresponding hind ones in succession.
+Plate XIV. shows what I mean, and the same thing appears in all the
+Muybridge photographs. But your eye can by no means catch Patroclus in
+this position. His hind legs seem to follow his fore legs much more
+closely; and he always lands cleverly and so well gathered as to make
+not the slightest falter in his new stride. It is also said that the
+best water-jumpers skim and do not rise much to the jump. But I fancy
+that every horse rises more to water than the fancy drawn pictures
+show. Gravitation alone, it seems, would make this necessary.
+Photography would prove the fact, but there are probably not enough
+such photographs extant to-day to decide upon the question.
+
+You may read a dozen volumes about jumping, Tom, but a dozen jumps
+will teach you a dozen times as much as the printer's ink. And
+remember that a standing or an irregular jump, even if small, or that
+the leap of a pony, is harder to sit than a well-timed jump of twice
+the dimensions on a full grown horse. I have been nearly dismounted in
+teaching a new horse much oftener than in the hunting-field. It is
+only when your horse comes down, or when a bad jumper rushes at his
+fence and then swerves or refuses suddenly, that there is any grave
+danger of a fall in riding to hounds.
+
+Don't be afraid of a fall. It won't hurt you much in nineteen cases
+out of twenty. If you find you are really going and can't save
+yourself, don't stiffen. Try to flop, the more like a drunken man the
+better. It is rigid muscles which break bones. This is a hard rule to
+learn. Many falls alone teach its uses. A suggestion will by no means
+do so. But hold on to your reins for your life, Tom, when you fall.
+This is one of the most important things to remember. It has saved
+many a man from being dragged.
+
+A man who brags that he has never had a fall may be set down as having
+never done much hard riding. Many a time and oft have the very best
+riders and their steeds entered the next field in Tom Noddy's order:
+
+    Tom Noddy         1.
+    T. N.'s b.g. Dan  2.
+
+And yet how few bones there are broken for the number of falls. A good
+shaking up is all there is to it, as a rule. When a man mellows into
+middle life--(how much farther on in years middle life is when we are
+well past forty than when we are twenty-five!)--he is apt to feel
+discreet, because conscious that a bad spill may hurt him worse than
+in his youth, and he will look upon a "hog-backed stile" as a thing
+requiring a deal of deliberation, if not a wee bit jumping-powder. He
+will avoid trying conclusions whenever he can. But at your age and
+with your legs, on that mare of yours, Tom, you should go anywhere, if
+she will learn to jump cleverly.
+
+Your feet should be "home" in the stirrups, and you will naturally
+throw them slightly backward as you hold on, toes down, because it
+both gives you the better grip and keeps your stirrup on your foot. In
+this particular, Tom, I bid you heed my precept, and not study my
+example, which is by no means of the best, as I am reduced to jumping
+with a straight leg, and to fastening my stirrup to my foot, lest I
+should not find it when I land.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI.
+
+
+The Englishman's method and seat for cross-country riding is
+undeniably the best, and perhaps is hardly to be criticised. But a
+good seat or hands for hunting are not necessarily good for all other
+saddle work. That firmness in the saddle which will take a man over a
+five-foot wall may not be of the same quality as will give him
+absolutely light hands for School-riding. For as a rule, Englishmen
+prefer hunters who take pretty well hold of the bridle, and work well
+up to the bit. And for this one purpose, perhaps they are right. Such
+a hold will not, however, teach a man the uses of light hands in the
+remotest degree.
+
+In a sharp run to hounds, a horse must have his head. For high pace or
+great exertions of mere speed, the horse must be free. A twitch on the
+curb may check him at a jump and give him a bad fall. As in racing, a
+horse has to learn that his duty is to put all his courage, speed, and
+jumping ability into his work, subject only to discreet guidance and
+management. But on the road, the exact reverse should be the rule.
+There is surely less enjoyment in your Penelope, who to-day can only
+walk, or else go a four-minute gait without constant friction, than
+there will be when she can vary her gaits and keep up any desired rate
+of speed, from a walk to a fifteen-mile trot or a sharp gallop, at the
+least intimation of your hands and without discomfort to herself. I
+know of nothing more annoying than to be forced by a riding companion
+of whichever sex into a sharper gait than either of you wish to go,
+because mounted on a fretting horse, who cannot be brought down to a
+comfortable rate of speed until all but tired out.
+
+In the hunting-field you expect to go fast for a short time, and it is
+alone the speed and the occasional obstacle which lend the zest to the
+sport. But for the ride on the road, which to many of us is a lazy
+luxury, you need variety in speed as well as gaits for both comfort
+and pleasure. Patroclus here will walk, amble, rack, single-foot,
+trot, canter, gallop, and run, or go from any one into any other at
+will; and every one of these gaits is unmistakably distinct, crisp,
+and well performed. Nor have I ever found him any the less
+accomplished cross-country, within his limitation of condition and
+speed, for having had a complete education for the road. When I give
+him his head and loosen my curb, I find him just as free as if I had
+never restrained him from choosing his own course. Who can deny that
+the pleasure to be derived from such a horse for daily use does not
+exceed that to be got from one who can only trot on the road, or run
+and jump in the field?
+
+  [Illustration: PLATE XIV.
+   LANDING.]
+
+Perhaps Nelly will never learn so much, for Patroclus is an
+exceptionally intelligent and well-suppled horse. But she can learn a
+good deal of it. Patroclus had no idea of any gait but a walk or trot
+when I bought him, nor did he start with any better equipment than
+Penelope; and in less than a year he knew all that he knows now, and
+much that he has forgotten. For in the many High School airs which he
+once could at call perform, he is altogether rusty from sheer lack of
+usage. But the "moral" may remain, though the fable may have long
+since passed from the memory.
+
+
+
+
+XLVII.
+
+
+Some horses, who trot squarely, will go naturally from a walk into a
+little amble or pace, which is sometimes called a "shuffle." Often
+this is an agreeable and handsome gait, but not infrequently far from
+pleasant. Often, too, it will spoil the speed of the walk, as the
+horse will insensibly fall into it if pushed beyond his ease. A slower
+rate at a faster pace is always easier to a horse than the extreme of
+speed at the lesser gait. It is scarcely worth while in the East to
+try to teach a horse to amble or rack if he does not naturally do so,
+though it can often be done.
+
+Apart from the agreeable and useful side of the true rack as a gait,
+it has not a few further advantages. In coming from a canter to a
+walk, a horse may be taught to slow up into a rack, and then drop to
+the walk, or to stop in the same manner. This enables him to come down
+without the least suspicion of that roughness which almost all horses
+show when stopping a canter, particularly if done quickly; unless,
+indeed, they be "poised" before being stopped, as a School-ridden
+horse always is from every gait. Moreover, when you rein a cantering
+horse down within the slowest limit of his speed at that pace, as to
+allow a team to pass, or for a similar purpose, if he knows how, he
+will fall into a rack, from which he can with much more comfort to
+himself and you resume the canter, than if he had fallen into a walk.
+A rack is not an interruption of the canter, as is a jog or walk, but
+a mere _retardando_, as it were. Still a rapid walk, a trot which
+varies from six to ten miles, and a well-collected canter suffice for
+any of our Eastern needs. These, and the gallop, moreover, are
+considered the only permissible paces by the School-riders of Europe.
+
+In our Southern States rackers are bred for, and the instinct is
+confirmed by training. In many warm countries, ambling is bred for. I
+do not think that any horse with practically but a single gait, as is
+usually the case with the ambler or racker, comes up to the requisite
+standard of usefulness. Of the two, I should give my preference, in
+our latitude, to a mere trotter, if easy, who had a busy walk beside.
+But in addition to the trot and canter, any comfortable gait may often
+be a relief, and it is eminently desirable, if the horse can learn it
+without spoiling his proper paces. Such a gait adds vastly to a
+horse's value for the saddle.
+
+I cannot agree with the School-riders that a rack may not be a good
+School gait. Patroclus' rack, when collected, is certainly as clean a
+performance as any of his other gaits. From it he will drop back to a
+walk, or fall into a canter or gallop with either lead, or into a
+square trot. And this more quickly than from another gait, for if, in
+a canter, the indication to trot be given him out of season, he may be
+obliged to complete one more stride before he can execute the order;
+whereas, from a rack, which is always a mid-stride for any gait, he
+can instantly fall into the one commanded. The indication and
+execution are often all but instantaneous from the rack. He is really
+more neatly collected on the rack proper than on any other gait,
+except the canter; and though the rack is unrecognized as a School
+pace, I feel certain that I could convince any master of the Haute
+Ecole that within proper limits it is an addition, not a loss, to the
+education of a horse. What School-riders mean when they exclude the
+rack from School-paces is that a racker has rarely any other gait; and
+in the usual loose-jointed rack of the South a horse is certainly not
+well enough poised for use in School performances.
+
+
+
+
+XLVIII.
+
+
+To come back to our original text, then, it is quite impossible to
+say, as a whole, what seat is intrinsically the best, or what nation
+furnishes the best of riders. It appears to me that there is such a
+thing as a _natural_ seat. Such a seat is clearly shown on the frieze
+of the Parthenon, and in a less artistic way may be seen among any
+horsemen riding without stirrups. Although Xenophon has been
+misunderstood in this particular, I feel convinced that his
+description calls for what I understand to be the natural seat. And
+the best military riders make the nearest approach to this position.
+By military seat I by no means intend to convey the idea of a straight
+leg, forked radish style. That is not the military seat proper. It is
+only in spite of such a seat, or in spite of the short stirrup of the
+East, and because they are always in the saddle, that the Mexican
+gaucho and the Arab of the desert both ride as magnificently as they
+do. The best military rider should, and does, carry the leg as it
+naturally falls when sitting on his breech, not his crotch, on the
+bare back of a horse. The steeple-chaser, or cross-country rider, for
+perfectly satisfactory reasons, has a much shorter stirrup. But on the
+road, he should, and generally does, come back more nearly to the
+natural length. The main advantage in the very long stirrup which
+obtains among so many peoples lies in the possibility of sitting close
+on a trot with greater ease, and of using the lasso or whip, or in
+having a free hand for their sundry sports or duties. And a high
+pommel and cantle are advantageous in helping the rider preserve his
+seat when he might be dragged--not thrown--from it in some of his
+peculiar experiences. But the perfectly straight leg always bears a
+suggestion of the parting advice of the groom to a Sunday rider just
+leaving the stable: "Look straight between his hears, sir, and keep
+your balance, and you _can't_ come hoff." On the other hand, the
+advantages of an extremely short stirrup, such as prevails in the
+Orient, are very difficult to be understood at all.
+
+The military riders of every civilized country, where enlistments are
+long enough, and where proper care is given to the instruction in
+equestrianism, are excellent. It would be curious indeed if men who
+devote their lives to the art should not be so. Some of our old army
+cavalry officers rode gloriously. Our volunteer cavalry, late in the
+war, rode strongly, though not always handsomely. During the past
+twenty years the severe work and long marches of our regular mounted
+troops have militated greatly against equestrianism as an art. Some of
+the most accomplished riders I have ever known have been in the United
+States Army. Philip Kearny, that _preux chevalier_, the "one-armed
+devil," was in every sense a superb rider. I have seen him with his
+cap in one hand, his empty sleeve blowing outward with his speed, and
+his sword dangling from his wrist, ride over a Virginia snake fence
+such as most of us would want to knock at least the top rail off.
+
+    "How he strode his brown steed! How we saw his blade brighten
+      In the one hand still left,--and the reins in his teeth!
+    He laughed like a boy when the holidays heighten,
+      But a soldier's glance shot from his visor beneath!"
+
+And a man who could not follow him did not long remain upon his staff.
+
+One of my lost opportunities occurred for such a reason during Pope's
+campaign, when General Kearny, who had dispatched right and left all
+his aides, beckoned to me at dusk one evening to ride out and draw the
+fire of some of the enemy's troops supposed to be on the edge of a
+wood, some half a mile or so distant. My own horse had been shot, and
+my equipments lost. I had captured an old farm-horse without a saddle,
+and had extemporized a rope bridle. The course lay athwart some open
+fields, with a number of fences still standing. My desire to do this
+work stood in inverse ratio to my steed's ability to second me. And no
+sooner had I ridden up and touched my cap for orders, than the general
+had gauged the poverty of my beast and rig, and speedily selected a
+better mounted messenger.
+
+During the war, among the volunteer troops, we used in some of the
+divisions to organize steeple-chases during a long term of inactive
+operations, and good ones we frequently had; the old style
+steeple-chase over an unknown course being the fashion, and the
+steeple generally a prominent tree, at a distance of a couple of
+miles. Often the course was round a less distant tree and back again.
+Not a few good riders and horses were forthcoming to enter for such an
+event, and I have rarely seen better riding than there. An unknown
+course over Virginia fences, and through patches of Virginia second
+growth, especially after heavy rains, when mere gutters became rivers
+for a number of hours, and the ground was much like hasty-pudding,
+could be a test to try the best of horses and horsemen.
+
+These are but isolated examples, instanced only as showing that every
+species of hard saddle work is very naturally apt to be cultivated
+among men whose duty keeps them in the saddle the better part of every
+day. And it is well known that English army officers are among the
+very best cross-country riders, and not a few have occupied the
+dignity of M. F. H., and done it credit. Surely such a rider, trained
+in the niceties of the _manege_, as well as experienced in riding
+to hounds, may fitly be placed at the head of the equestrian roll of
+honor.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+After excluding professionals, then (and exceptional individuals), I
+am afraid I must brave criticism in calling the officers of civilized
+mounted troops distinctly the best class of riders. Next--perhaps you
+will say in the same category--comes that class in England which makes
+its one pleasure the prosecution of the most splendid of all sports,
+fox-hunting, and has reached perfection in the art. Excluding all
+riders who do not belong to the classes available for our imitation,
+there comes next, _longo intervallo_, the civilian rider everywhere.
+
+It is impossible to draw any comparison between the above classes and
+even our own cowboys, whose peculiar duties and untamed mustangs
+prescribe their long leathers and horned pommel. Nor can the
+equatorial style be fairly contrasted with what meets the wants of the
+denizens of the civilized cities of the temperate zone.
+
+In this country, the Southerner is the most constantly in the saddle,
+and a good rider in the sunny South is a thoroughly good rider. But I
+have often wondered at the number of poor ones it is possible to find
+in localities where everybody moves about in the saddle. Many men
+there, who ride all the time, seem to have acquired the trick of
+breaking every commandment in the decalogue of equitation. Using
+horses as a mere means of transportation seems sometimes to reduce the
+steed to a simple beast of burden, and equestrianism to the bald
+ability to sit in the saddle as you would in an ox-cart.
+
+I think I have seen more graceful equestriennes in the South than
+anywhere else,--than even in England. But I must admit that all women
+who ride well possess such attractions for me as perhaps to warp my
+judgment in endeavoring to draw comparisons. Who but a Paris could
+have awarded the apple?
+
+Although the Southern woman refuses to ride the trot, she has a proper
+substitute for it, and her seat is generally admirable. Though I
+greatly admire a square trot well ridden in a side-saddle, it is
+really the rise on this gait which makes so many crooked female riders
+among ourselves and our British cousins. This ought not to be so, but
+ladies are apt to resent too much severity in instruction, and without
+strict obedience to her master, a lady never learns to ride gracefully
+and stoutly. In the South, ladies ride habitually, and moreover a
+rack, single-foot, and canter are not only graceful, but
+straight-sitting paces for a woman.
+
+It is not to-day risking much, however, to prophesy that within the
+lapse of little time our Eastern cities will boast as many clever
+Amazons as are to be found in the South. Who can contend that our
+Yankee women have not the intelligence, courage, vigor, and grace to
+rank with the riders of any clime?
+
+
+
+
+XLIX.
+
+
+And now, Master Tom, let me again impress upon you that I have been
+giving you only the most rudimentary idea of how to train your mare.
+By no means expect that Nelly will ever execute the traverse,
+pirouette, Spanish trot, or piaffer, let alone trot or gallop
+backwards, as these airs should be performed, by any such superficial
+education. But you will certainly find her more agreeable, more
+tractable, safer, and easier, and you will have both enjoyed the
+schooling. And I feel assured that having gone so far you will not
+stop short of the next step, the study and practice of the art in its
+true refinements. I may, moreover, safely assume that after you have
+once owned a School-trained horse, you will never again be content
+with what might be appropriately termed the "perfect saddle horse" of
+commerce.
+
+Our roads part here,--yours towards the studious shades of Harvard,
+mine towards the rolling uplands of Chestnut Hill. Fare you well!
+
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+PATROCLUS AND PENELOPE
+
+_A CHAT IN THE SADDLE_
+
+
+BY
+THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE
+
+BREVET LIEUTENANT-COLONEL UNITED STATES ARMY (RETIRED LIST); AUTHOR OF
+"THE CAMPAIGN OF CHANCELLORSVILLE," "A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE CIVIL
+WAR," ETC., ETC.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED WITH FOURTEEN PHOTOTYPES OF
+THE HORSE IN MOTION
+
+
+_Since--as it has been our fortune to be long engaged about horses--we
+consider that we have acquired some knowledge of horsemanship, we
+desire also to intimate to the younger part of our friends how we
+think that they may bestow their attention on horses to the best
+advantage._
+
+XENOPHON _on Horsemanship_
+
+
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+PATROCLUS AND PENELOPE:
+
+
+A Chat in the Saddle. By THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE, Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel,
+U.S.A. (Retired List), author of "The Campaign of Chancellorsville,"
+"A Bird's-Eye View of the Civil War," etc. Illustrated with fourteen
+phototypes of the Horse in motion. In one volume, octavo, gilt top,
+half roan, $3.00.
+
+CONTENTS: Patroclus and I; Saddles and Seats; Patroclus on a Rack; The
+Rack and Single-Foot; Patroclus Trotting; Thoroughbred or Half-Bred;
+The Saddle Mania; Park-Riding; A Fine Horse not necessarily a Good
+Hack; Soldiers have Stout Seats; A Gate and a Brook; The Old Trooper;
+Instruction in Riding; Chilly Fox-Hunting; Is Soldier or Fox-Hunter
+the Better Rider? The School-Rider; Patroclus Happy; Photography
+versus Art; A One-Man Horse; Baucher's Favorite Saddle Horse;
+Patroclus sniffs a Friend; Riding-Schools and School-Riding; Is
+Schooling of Value? Manuals of Training; Result of Training; Qualities
+of the Horse; Dress, Saddles, and Bridles; Mounting; How to hold the
+Reins; How to begin Training; Penelope's Unrestrained Courage; Hints
+before beginning to train a Horse; Guiding by the Neck; What an Arched
+Neck means; Flexions of the Neck; Flexions of the Croup; The Canter;
+Leading with either Shoulder; The Horse's Natural Lead; The Best Way
+to teach the Lead; Change of Lead in Motion; Suggestions; How to begin
+Jumping; The Reins in the Jump; Odds and Ends of Leaping; Hunting and
+Road-Riding; Advantages of True Rack; Who is the Best Rider? Vale!
+
+_This book is written from an experience extending over thirty
+years,--in the English hunting-field, the Prussian army, the plains of
+the West, active service during the Civil War, and daily riding
+everywhere. The author has studied equestrianism as an art, and,
+although believing in the Haute Ecole of Baucher, enjoys with equal
+zest a ride to hounds or a gallop on the western prairies._
+
+_The experienced equestrian will be delighted by the author's breezy
+talk and thorough knowledge of his subject. The young horseman who may
+have purchased a colt just broken to harness can by the use of its
+hints make him as clever as Patroclus. Even the man who rides but a
+dozen times a year will be interested in the book, while the every-day
+reader will be charmed by its simplicity, geniality, and heartiness._
+
+
+NOTICES OF THE PRESS.
+
+The reader must feel that he is in distinctively good company. It is a
+running commentary on saddle-riding, and gives the reader much the
+same advantages he would have from a season's riding in company with a
+gentleman who has ridden in all countries, on all sorts of animals,
+and under all sorts of conditions.... One of the most attractive of
+recent books.--_Boston Advertiser._
+
+We all love Isaak Walton's talks about fish or John Burroughs's essays
+on birds; in the same spirit is this delightful book of Col.
+Dodge's.... It is a familiar chat of a man who knows all about
+horsemanship and can tell you how to mount or ride, what saddle or
+bridle to use, and, at the same time, touch upon life in the saddle
+with words which will make your blood tingle.--_Saturday Evening
+Gazette_ (Boston).
+
+It consists of a series of essay-like chapters written in a lively,
+chatty, conversational manner which makes it charming reading. The
+advice is full of hints and suggestions to the experienced horseman as
+well as of instructions of the utmost value to the new initiate in the
+equestrian art. We are in sympathy with the author before the first
+page is turned.--_Yale Literary Magazine_ (New Haven).
+
+The volume consists of a most charming series of chats about horses
+and horsemanship by a man who is thoroughly in the spirit of his
+subject, and who is not a hidebound partisan of any school of
+equestrianism, holding to the catholic belief that there are good
+riders in every land and in every species of saddle.--_Army and Navy
+Journal_ (New York).
+
+It abounds in excellent suggestions, the fruit of sound experience,
+accurate observations, and good common sense. It is an excellent book
+for the amateur. Withal it is told in a pleasant, easy way, as if it
+had been written in the saddle instead of at the desk.--_Christian
+Register_ (Boston).
+
+Col. Dodge combines to an altogether uncommon degree the merit of a
+close acquaintance with and real enthusiasm in his subject, and the
+quality of a trained literarian. The aspiring equestrian will gain
+instruction from the lips of a masterly instructor.--_Christian
+Union_ (New York).
+
+Col. Dodge has given the beginner in the art of horsemanship the best
+possible introduction to his pleasurable task. The author has had a
+much wider store of practical experience in horsemanship than his
+predecessors in this field of instruction.--_New York Evening Post._
+
+The practical horseman cannot fail to admire the firm, easy seat which
+the beginner will do well to copy. "Patroclus" is ably described, and,
+if up to what is said of him, must be a gem of the first
+water.--_New York Times._
+
+One who has had some experience in the saddle will derive from it the
+same sort of profit and entertainment which might be expected from an
+accomplished, observant, clear-headed, and good-natured companion on
+the road.--_New York Tribune._
+
+Col. Dodge rode his horse at the time the photographs were taken, and
+his skill in horsemanship is exhibited by a seat that was undisturbed
+by even the most violent exertions of his steed.--_Sporting and
+Dramatic News_ (London).
+
+His horse "Patroclus" is his hero, his mare "Penelope" his heroine,
+and the adventures undertaken with the aid of these two good animals
+make a story which will fire the blood of every reader.--_Brooklyn
+Union._
+
+Col. Dodge has succeeded in giving much excellent advice on the
+management of the horse, while at the same time holding the reader's
+attention by the interest of the narrative.--_Herald-Crimson_
+(Cambridge).
+
+The beginner who will follow the excellent and simple rules of
+training given by our author will be sure to win success in the art
+and a great deal of pleasure by the way.--_The Nation_ (New York).
+
+Considerable as is the space allotted to jumping, it is not too great
+in view of the popularity of cross-country riding. We find in it
+nothing to criticise.--_Philadelphia Record._
+
+Written in a pleasant, sympathetic vein and in almost conversational
+form, it has an abundance of keen hints and graceful thoughts on
+horseback riding as an art.--_Cincinnati Commercial Gazette._
+
+He covers the whole ground of good horsemanship, not as an amateur or
+theorist, but as one who knows all the facts with which he
+deals.--_San Francisco Chronicle._
+
+Col. Dodge is an expert in all the finesse and paraphernalia of horses
+and horseback-riding.... The advice is sound and simple and very
+direct.--_The Critic_ (New York).
+
+The chapters on the training of horse and rider are full of sound
+information, clearly stated, and practical to the last.--_Journal of
+Military Service Institution_ (New York).
+
+A lover of horses will find in this volume a book which will give him
+unlimited pleasure.--_The Book-Buyer_ (New York).
+
+This book will be given an enthusiastic welcome by all lovers of
+equestrianism.--_Chicago Journal._
+
+The hearty animal spirits which gallop through its pages are
+catching.--_New York Mail and Express._
+
+Col. Dodge is a charming teacher.--_Boston Herald._
+
+
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
+  _Publishers_,
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Patroclus and Penelope, by Theodore Ayrault Dodge
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