246 TO COVER STYLE 



Anglo-Saxon common-sense has been a distinct benefit all 

 over the Continent ; and the sublimity of British egoism 

 in accepting the change is truly delightful. Were I not a 

 Yankee of the Yankees, might I be a Briton ! He feels 

 that he may seize the best of everything as a right, and 

 takes umbrage if some one has got ahead of him. As a 

 cowboy divides all mankind into ranchmen (the sheep) 

 and tenderfoots (the goats), so the Briton knows but two 

 classes : subjects of her Majesty or what is the modern 

 equivalent of the fidpftapot, of the ancient world ? Philis- 

 tines? He is monumental, your Briton. I love him for 

 his magnificence of self-assertion, his unlimited " side ;" I 

 am disposed to hate him when he treads on my traveller's 

 toes, as now and then he happens to do. 



Among his imitators are the army men. No doubt 

 Continental officers have profited by the bit of English 

 rough-riding they have learned of late years, but their 

 self-assumed British style looks like overdoing the prac- 

 tical. When smokeless powder shall have brought all uni- 

 forms down to butternut or some other humdrum color, 

 this style will be eminently proper ; but so long as the 

 gay and gaudy is de rigueur in the uniform, the method of 

 riding ought to correspond. Not that there is the least 

 objection to English horsemanship or English tweed suits. 

 On the contrary, both are practical, admirable. But to 

 see an officer with red peg-top trousers, gold-laced red cap, 

 a light-blue jacket trimmed "with ribbons and bibbons 

 and loops and lace," and a dangling sabre, on a flat Eng- 

 lish saddle, and rising to a swinging trot as if he were 

 astride a cover-hack, is too much like serving you Veuve 

 Cliquot in a pewter mug to suit my ideas of the appropri- 

 ate. Veuve Cliquot is good ; so is a pewter mug ; but the 

 twain do not match. Moreover, if a soldier uses his two 

 hands to guide his horse, as these French Anglomaniacs 



