176 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 



or of attempting feats out of mere bravado, though 

 one's self be the only spectator. The true rule is 

 neither to go out of your way to meet clanger, nor 

 to decline the opportunity when it comes. Anybody 

 who is much in the saddle will sooner or later find 

 an occasion to test his mettle ; and if one have the 

 happiness to play polo, or, more especially, to ride 

 to hounds, such occasions will be frequent. Of all 

 the manly arts, horsemanship is the one where mere 

 strength and size count the least, and skill and cour- 

 age the most. 



A small, weak man with "hands' can manage a 

 beast which a big, strong man without them cannot 

 keep from running away. On the other hand, muscle 

 and endurance have full scope in the saddle. Asshe- 

 ton Smith used to tumble his hunters over fences too 

 high to be jumped ; for nearly fifty years he averaged 

 about fifty falls a season, and yet he never received 

 more than one serious injury. Assheton Smith was 

 a born fox-hunter ; but other men, handicapped by 

 nature, have shown their prowess in the saddle. To 

 think of Anthony Trollope, riding " straight, " though 

 old and half blind, and souuding, as he humorously 

 said, the depths of every ditch in Essex, — to re- 

 member such achievements is to raise one's standard 

 of human courage and pertinacity. 



The late E. H. Dana used to say that every man 

 ought at least once in his life to face death. For the 

 modern man, sport must commonly supply, if not 

 a proximity to death, at least a certain hardness of 

 experience which in former ages war, or travel, or 

 tournaments, or duels afforded. There is a keen joy 

 which civilization seems to whet, rather than to 



