132 TWEED SUITS, ET AL. 



good performance. I am something of a horseman yet, 

 but old army wounds have kept me out of the saddle now 

 some five years past, and threaten to end what for nearly 

 four decades has been my happiest pastime. I have long 

 ago yielded my place to the younger generation, to whose 

 sturdy courage and fast growing skill I yield my very 

 honest admiration. But though they must increase as I 

 must decrease, they will not take it amiss if I descant 

 upon what I once could do, and still well know, though 

 performance be pf the past; and they will not feel that I 

 criticise unkindly. From the mass of chatty chaff they 

 may perhaps glean a few kernels of grain ; for it has not 

 fallen to the lot of every horseman to study the horses of 

 so many lands. Moreover, I fancy that my hand has not 

 yet lost its cunning ; and that, when I find a promising 

 young horse, I can still vie with many another man in 

 making him a perfect saddle-beast. I should scarce dare 

 compete with the rough -riding "trainer" or the bronco- 

 buster ; but I feel that I might still accomplish results in 

 the way of the niceties of equitation. 



The Mexican gentleman, like most Southerners, is a 

 good rider within his limits. He is the very reverse of 

 the Englishman, who, with his reductio ad simplicitatem 

 of everything, has stripped the beauties of equestrianism 

 to the bone. With his tweed suits and his brusque man- 

 ners, with his disregard of everything which lends a touch 

 of charm to daily life, he has driven out much that is 

 beautiful and more that is gallant in social and equestrian 

 pleasures alike. With lace ruffles and buckled shoes have 

 quite disappeared not only the beauties of equitation, but 

 the graceful outward courtesies to the other sex ; and the 

 place of the latter has not been filled by the acknowledg- 

 ment conveyed in the cavalier manner now in vogue that 

 women have grown in wisdom to the point of taking care 



