THE SADDLE-HORSE 53 



without fatigue. The rider sits down in his saddle, light hands 

 easily control his horse, he jumps his fences as they come, re- 

 cognising the manner in which each variety hedge, timber, or 

 water should be taken, and has no sort of desire to practise the 

 ' high airs ' of the school. To him it seems utter waste of time 

 to induce a horse to piaffer, execute the Spanish trot, or per- 

 form other feats of school training. If he can make his horse 

 lead off with either leg as he may indicate, and perhaps swing 

 his croup as well as his forehand, the animal is looked on as 

 possessing a superfluity of accomplishments. The school rider, 

 on the other hand, has a very poor opinion of the man who in 

 what seems to him a rough and uncultivated way can gallop a 

 horse in more or less uncollected fashion over field and fallow, 

 getting over or through such obstacles as intervene. It is 

 argued by an enthusiast Colonel Theodore Ayrault Dodge, 

 author of an excellent work on riding called 'Patroclus and 

 Penelope' that no man who has once been a school-rider 

 ever abandons either the knowledge he has gained or its 

 constant practice. 'No one,' he maintains, 'can underrate 

 the pleasure of swift motion upon a vigorous horse. But the 

 school-rider has this, in equal degree with the uneducated horse- 

 man, coupled with a feeling of control, and power, and ability 

 to perform which the mere man on horseback never attains. 

 Moreover, all the powers of the school-rider's horse are within 

 the grasp of his hand ; and that the powers of the high-strung 

 steed of the average equestrian are all too often resident mainly 

 in the animal itself, is shown by the chapter of accidents daily 

 reiterated in the news-columns. The school man is apt to 

 ride more moderately, and to indulge in a bracing gallop less 

 frequently, because to him the pleasure of slow and rhythmic 

 movement on a fleet and able horse is far greater than mere 

 rapidity can ever be ; the untrained rider resorts to speed 

 because this is the one exhilaration within the bounds of his 

 own or his horse's knowledge. I do not wish to be understood 

 as advocating the school habit of always keeping a horse col- 

 lected. I often saunter off a half dozen miles without lifting 



