There are other reasons, also, on which I ground my objections to children riding. Little girls are exceedingly apt to grow crooked. It is all sheer nonsense to say “they will not if they sit straight,” inasmuch as young riders never do, as a rule, fall into the desired method; or, if for awhile it is a thing accomplished, they very speedily fall out of it again, when fatigue overpowers them, or the groom has shortened their stirrup-leather too much, or when a large amount of pressure upon it during a long ride has stretched it to an uncomfortable length. It is the merest sophistry to argue that such things ought not to occur, seeing that they do, and are in fact happening every day around us. One child out of five hundred may, perhaps, be an habitual straight-sitter, but to counterbalance her perfection in this particular, the remaining 499 will be either hanging to one side or the other (usually the near, or left side), or sitting square enough, it may be, yet with the right shoulder thrust forward and upward, thus sowing the seeds of a deformity which in ten years’ time, when the little one of eight shall have grown into a belle of eighteen, will have become an incurable disfigurement, one which all the arts of the most skilful modiste cannot by any possibility cover, or the most seraphic charms of face and manner serve to put out of sight.
The frame of a child, even the most robust, is too weakly and delicate—too liable to grow “out of form”—to render equestrian exercise a fitting pursuit for persons of tender age. Nature has not ruled that her frail handiwork shall be roughly or unfairly strained, and when it is, the penalty is certain to follow, in disarranged system, weakened or injured muscular development, misplaced shoulder-blades, undue tension of the tendons of the left leg—or contraction of them, which is worse—accompanied by an unnatural languor and a constant craving for permission “to go and lie down,” which, in so many cases, children are observed to manifest.
The absurd assertion that no girl can excel as a horsewoman unless she begins to practise the art when a child has been so often and substantially refuted that to attempt further contradiction of it would be merely to entail loss of time. Suffice it to say that some of the finest equestrians the world has ever produced have been entirely ignorant of riding until after their arrival at womanhood, or, at all events, until childish days had been left far in the rear. Of these a foreign Empress is a noteworthy example, while many others, whose names in park and hunting-field are familiar as household words, might go to swell the list.
“Well, but really”—I fancy I hear some unconvinced matron saying—“I cannot see that my children are anything the worse for riding every day. I myself rode when I was their age, and it never seemed to do me any harm.” Granted, madam; but question yourself, whether you have a right, because you have had the good fortune to escape the evils usually consequent upon a prejudicial system, to encourage your offspring to go in the way of contracting them. As well might you boast of having escaped contagion during an attendance on a fever patient, and then (presuming on your own lucky chance) thrust your children deliberately into an infected house. No; if you are a wise parent, or guardian, advocate early instruction in pianoforte-playing and its study, also in drawing, painting, and such branches of education as will expand and benefit the understanding, without unduly straining the yet undeveloped resources of the body; encourage likewise such exercises as are of a healthful and suitable nature—but compel the young folks of whom you have charge to leave riding alone, at all events until the fourteenth year has been well got over: because, just as in singing the vocal organs are weak, and the voice apt to alter and break about that period (which is the case with girls as with boys, although very many fail to know or believe it), so, in like manner, the frame of a young girl is delicate and unstrung, and is absolutely incapable of enduring strain or fatigue without incurring consequences which, even if not made much account of at the time, will most likely in after life cause themselves to be dismally felt.
About fifteen, or from that to twenty, is an excellent time for a girl to learn to ride—by which I mean that she ought not to attempt it before the first-mentioned age while the last will not be one whit too late. Boys may begin whenever they choose; their position on horseback obviates the possibility of growing shoulder-crooked, while custom which enables them to ride with a leg on each side of the saddle, equalises their seat, and fairly distributes the amount of stress which pressure on the stirrups entails upon both nether limbs. Moreover, they are infinitely stronger, even from babyhood—can bear any amount of knocking about, and so far from being injured by an occasional spill or two, are immensely benefited by making moderate acquaintance with mother earth. It is not so with girls, and around them all my sympathies entwine.
CONQUERED HIS RIDER.
CHAPTER II.
FOR MOTHERS AND CHILDREN.
It is a rare thing to take up a cookery book in which the reader is not solemnly warned against the evils attendant upon frying chops and steaks in the pan, the deterrent paragraph usually winding up with: “Nevertheless, for the benefit of those who will not be brought to acknowledge the superiority of the gridiron as a cooking utensil, we append a few instructions.” It is as though the writer of the volume meant solemnly to say, “I have told you how to avoid the horrors of dyspepsia; but, if you will go in for them, I may as well show you the least objectionable way of doing it.”