Chapter XIX: A One-Man Horse 69 (2)

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.

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.

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.

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.