Whenever a loop is taken or any other indication attempted of what you want your horses to do, avoid confusion by giving a variety of signals at one and the same time. For example, in taking a loop, if you allow your left hand to slide forward to receive it under the thumb instead of letting the right hand bring it back, you slacken your reins and your horses start forward just when they should be well in hand. If a horse feels this tightening of the rein from the point you are making and then feels the pressure lessen, he will whip back again; hence the necessity for holding your point until the horses have responded fully. It is much better to hold a point too long than to let it go before its work is done. In pulling reins toward you, do not draw the rein to one side, thus drawing the hands apart, but pull directly toward the body—straight back, in short. Never let your right hand get so far away from the left that it cannot be used instantly when wanted. If you are a beginner, get a steady pair and keep at this fingering of the reins; the starting, with pressure of the right hand in front of the left just enough to feel their mouths; the stopping, with right hand properly grasping the reins; the points to the left and the right, and the shortening of the reins, until these matters are done quickly and automatically without the necessity of looking at your hands at all. And though this be a treatise on driving, let us be frank and say that a good teacher is better than any book. Sit beside a good coachman as often as you can and watch him like a lynx. Get a good coachman to sit beside you and tell you and explain to you; then go back to your book again, and you will get much more out of it than before. A brilliant Frenchman has said that he studied books while he was waiting to study men. The book-learning is far more valuable when supplemented by practice. On the other hand, it is only the very ignorant in these days who do not make what use they can of other men's experience and practice, by studying up in books any subject in which they are interested.
To read a good book on driving helps your teacher even more than it helps you, in that you have at least some inkling of the elementary principles of what he is to teach you. Even with one horse these manœuvres may be gone through with, and every turn, and start, and stop, made with the same nicety and care, as though one were driving his drag at a meet of the coaching-club.
Mr. Underhill's sumptuous book is entitled "Driving for Pleasure." There is an amusing chapter to be written on Driving for Punishment, with illustrations from life, if one cared to write it. The distortions of face, hands, and body, through trying to do simple things in an awkward and roundabout way; the mixing up of whip, hands, and reins, through not having toiled sufficiently over the elementary stages of the art of driving; the brake on or off when it should not be, and a complete loss of head, the horses any way, and their owner in roseate confusion, are phases of the driving for punishment one often sees. And be it said, driving is a punishment indeed, when bad bitting, ill-fitting harness, horses badly put to, and awkward handling of reins, whip, and brake, are of one and the same combination.
CHAPTER XIV
DRIVING FOUR
About the year 1840, with the advent of railways in England, coaching, for a time at least, practically came to an end. Before that time, all transportation of passengers, mail, and small merchandise was by coach. The mail-coaches were under government control, and as representing the Sovereign, had rights and privileges, and were entitled to respect. Many of the present-day usages are reminders of that time, and relics of ancient customs. That other vehicles should give way to the mail-coach, that the constables should salute as it passed, that other coachmen should recognize it by saluting, can be readily appreciated. In England to-day, the coaches running out of London with their loads of passengers, bent on a day's pleasant outing merely, are treated much in the same way. All but surly drivers make way for them, the police salute, many of the other coachmen salute, and the forms of what were once realities still obtain.
Both there and here many people forget, that these coaches must take out a license, and are bound by the laws governing other vehicles employed for the transportation of passengers. The coach put on each season by the Coaching-club of New York, and which has run latterly from the Holland House to Ardsley on the Hudson and return, although it may be done primarily for sport, is none the less governed by the terms of its license. Hence it is that a good sportsman, in undertaking such a duty, goes rain or shine, makes a point of being on time, insists upon promptness, not as a fad of his own, but because these are the implied articles of agreement between him and the city when he takes out his license. Like all other good sport, there is an element of hard work and tyranny in it. The coachman must at all times obey the laws of the sport.
To buy, train, and drive the horses, and carry out a successful schedule for six weeks or so, with the innumerable details involved, is a task requiring knowledge, experience, tact, and patience. The man who can do this may be said to have passed his postgraduate examination as a first-class coachman.