THE TROT. 69 



The rider must bump the saddle, there is no help for it ; but 

 the jolting will do his liver good, and strengthen the muscles 

 of his stomach. He must rise and fall with the pace of the 

 horse ; but a good deal of the " bone setting " may be got rid 

 of by allowing both body and limbs to be perfectly flexible 

 and free from restraint, except so far as to preserve the proper 

 position in the saddle and to guard against the tendencies 

 above referred to. With the bridle in both hands, using the 

 bridoon reins only, his first trot must be slow and of short 

 duration. He must not seek support from the bridle, or by 

 clinging, like a sailor shinning up a bare pole, to the sides 

 of his horse, but must sit well down and endeavour to find 

 his seat by the aid of the balance alone. If nature has 

 endowed him with round thick thighs and short muscular 

 legs, why then he will have a inauvais quart dWieure, and a 

 rough, slippery fifteen minutes it will be. Men with long 

 flat thighs will take to the novel situation, if not nervous, 

 like young ducks to water. Once perfected in the trot, all 

 the rest is comparatively plain sailing. To beginners first 

 lessons must be slow and of short duration, and the horse 

 selected to take them on had better be well bred, with springy 

 pasterns, and an elastic yielding spine. Many tyros, whose 

 muscles and interior economy are unused to the eftbrt, will 

 soon tire, others become numbed, and in warm close 

 weather I have known not a few suffer from giddiness. 

 Under such circumstances, an immediate halt, with a 

 friendly grip on mane or pommel, is allowable. Of course 

 the rider, say what the instructor may, will at first endeavour 

 to promote a rise at the expense of the bars or angle of the 

 horse's mouth. Some there are who, if allowed stirrups, 

 will rise in them to make the horse raise a trot, not having 

 learnt the fact that the trotting of the horse induces the 

 rising, not the rising the trot. Others work their arms 



