WHEN LADIES BEGAN TO HUNT. 305 



when she came to the brook, over she went. 

 That was the first lady whom I saw go 

 over a country. There is one certainty about ladies, 

 what one does another will do, if it be worth the 

 doing. Very soon others were at the game, and 

 many have played it well since." In a pleasant 

 little book entitled The Young Ladies Equestrian 

 Manual, written by a lady and published in 1838, 

 we read, " No lady of taste ever gallops on the road. 

 Into this pace the lady's horse is never urged, or 

 permitted to break, except in the field ; and not 

 above one among a thousand of our fair readers, it 

 may be surmised, is likely to be endowed with 

 sufficient ambition and boldness, to attempt the 

 following of hounds." The saddle given in a draw- 

 ing in this book has no leaping head, but the writer 

 mentions, as I have previously noted, that movable 

 crutches were being introduced to enable a lady to 

 ride on either side of her horse. The leaping head 

 (p. 33), third crutch, or third pommel, as it was first 

 called in England, came into use in this country in 

 the forties, and with its aid ladies felt themselves 

 endowed with sufficient ambition and boldness to 

 follow hounds. Captain Elmhirst, writing in 1877, 

 says : "It will, I think, be admitted by everyone 

 that the number of ladies who hunt now is at least 

 tenfold as compared with a dozen years ago," and 

 every year since that was written, has seen a steady 

 increase in the ranks of hunting women. 



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