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!