SPECIAL FORMS OF EESTIVENESS. 247 



Here it may be well to say what the rider should do 

 if his horse runs away with him. The general impres- 

 sion seems to be, that the safest thing is merely to 

 endeavour to keep the animal straight till it gets tired 

 of galloping, and keep one's own seat as long as possible ; 

 consequently the rider plants his feet as firmly as he 

 can in the stirrups, and shoves these out towards the 

 horse's shoulders in order to get fixed points from which 

 he can have a dead pull on the reins, and of course his 

 body, from the hips upwards, goes to the rear, right 

 over the horse's loins. Now, although this method of 

 proceeding suggests itself very naturally, it is neverthe- 

 less all wrong, as, indeed, must be quite clear to those 

 readers who have read the preceding pages with any 

 degree of attention; for whether the difficulty has its 

 seat in the horse's hind quarters, or in the throat and 

 neck, it is sure to be aggravated in this way ; besides 

 that one can seldom reckon upon having room enough 

 to try this experiment without encountering some ob- 

 stacle, or a sharp corner, that brings horse and rider 

 down with a smash. 



Let us take the case of a horse running away in a 

 field or open space, in the first instance, as being more 

 easy to deal with. Here the principal object must be 

 to take your horse off the straight line and on to a 

 circle at first, of course, a wide one, but by degrees 

 gradually narrowing. On a circle one has room enough 

 even for the tiring process, seeing that it never ends, 

 but the thing is to know how to get and keep the 

 horse on to it. In the first place, then, it requires 

 simply coolness and self-possession sufficient to enable 

 the rider to sit well down in his saddle, bringing his 

 legs well back and keeping his body upright the legs 



