[BOY TROOPERS.]
BY RICHARD BARRY.
Illustrated by Instantaneous Flash-light Photographs of "Troop A" Cadets.
he cavalry has always been the most popular branch of army service in song and story, and, beyond doubt, in the mind of the public. To a boy who has a leaning towards military things it has an absolute fascination, and if he likes a horse (and what boy does not?) it is his choice beyond all others.
In New York city there exists a troop of boy cavalry that has been drilling and exercising faithfully, and under such able direction that it may be taken as a model for what a boys' organization of this kind should be. Soldiering means really serious work, whether it is in the service of a State, a country, or merely entered into for the love of it, and a boy who has not the proper spirit cannot long remain a member of "Troop A" Cadets. It is astonishing to find how quickly and how well the boy recruit learns to ride, how much he learns about a horse, and how his muscles and his eye and his self-reliance develop under the drill. The writer has seen riding that no cowboy need be ashamed of done by a boy of fourteen who a year before had never thrown his leg over anything but a Shetland-pony, and many of the young troopers never mounted a horse at all until they first made their appearance in the tan-bark ring of the troop riding-school. If a boy is a "muff," he does not stay at it long; it takes a lad with the "proper stuff" in him, as the riding-master tells you, to stand the thumping and sometimes the falls of the first month's drill. A horse is a very complicated piece of machinery to the novice, and he must be managed by the eye, the whole body, and the mind. He knows when the rider on his back is timid or determined, and he often acts accordingly. Horses have an individuality that bicycles haven't, and the young trooper must learn to govern besides learning merely to guide and "stay on."
But to take in order what a boy cavalryman must learn. In the first place he must be strong and willing, and quick to listen; that is a great thing—listening. He will find out a great deal about himself, and if he has the right stamina and spirit he improves in every way most wonderfully.
DRESS PARADE.