A TALK ABOUT THE PIGSKIN.
BY A SPORTING TRAMP.
“This gallant
Had witchcraft in’t—he grew unto his seat;
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
As he had been incorpsed, and demi-natured
With the brave beast.”—Hamlet.
TO deliberately sit down and write on the subject of riding is a task which is attended with no slight difficulty. Such themes are invariably hard to handle, but riding has special difficulties. Much that is apropos and correct has been written on this most engaging subject from the day of Xenophon onward, but it is nevertheless an impossibility—nay, more, it is an absurdity, to suppose that rules can be shaped by which all can regulate their particular styles of riding. It is as futile to try to frame a code for the direction of both the fashionable crowd of a metropolis and the ranchmen of the West as to compare the Indian squaw, crouched on the pony that drags the “tepee” poles, with the blithe damsels enjoying a scamper on the breezy downs of Sussex.
Not only do different surroundings and objects alter the style, but Mother Nature has endowed her sons with limbs of varying shapes. It is no more possible for the short, stout man of vast avoirdupois to emulate the methods of a McLaughlin, a Fred Archer or a Tom Cannon, than it is for the same person to look elegant on a ball-room floor. “Circumstances alter cases,” and every man must adapt himself to the saddle as best he can.