138 RISING TO A TROT 



The seat of the average Mexican exquisite is the perfect 

 pattern of a clothes-pin. Leaning against the cantle, he will 

 stretch his legs forward and outward, with heels depressed 

 in a fashion which reminds one of Sydney Smith's saying, 

 that he did not object to a clergyman riding if only he 

 rode very badly and turned out his toes. It is the very 

 converse of riding close to your horse. In what it origi- 

 nates it is hard to guess, unless bravado. The cowboy, 

 with an equally short seat and long stirrups, keeps his legs 

 where they belong, and if his leg is out of perpendicular, 

 it will be so to the rear. Not all Mexicans ride the clothes- 

 pin seat. There are many riders of good style to be seen 

 in the City of Mexico, and there are good horsemen. But 

 when the pure Mexican rider puts on a bit of " side" he is 

 deliciously ungainly in a horseman sense, though always 

 picturesque to the every-day beholder. 



The rack rarely, the canter all but universally, is ridden 

 by the Mexican. It is only the Englishman and those he 

 has taught who ride what can be called a trot. With all 

 others the trot is a mere jog, though a good open trot is 

 one of the easiest gaits for a horse to go, and, risen to, one 

 of the most delightful on the road. Luckily, as the horses 

 of the world gain in breeding by the infusion of English 

 stock, so the world is learning the English habit of rising. 

 When I was a school-boy in Prussia I was fairly hooted out 

 of rising to a trot, a habit I had previously learned in Eng- 

 land. But now you see the Prussians all the Continental 

 officers, in fact riding d VAnglaise in full uniform, and 

 one may see a lancer or hussar trotting through the streets 

 with a handful of despatches, leaning over his horse's neck 

 and rising to the gait in a fashion which would have court- 

 martialled him in the old ramrod Anglophobia days of 

 Frederick William IY. For all they laugh at England 

 for her military pretensions, they adopt many good things 



