RIDING WITHOUT STIRRUPS. 9 



body, which is manifestly the cause of the large majority 

 of falls. If, however, he grasps the pommel or the mane, 

 the fact of his doing so will cause the weight of his body to 

 be carried forward. He will then, though probably able to 

 preserve his balance while the horse is going straight on at a 

 uniform pace, be almost certain to roll off, if the animal 

 suddenly slackens its speed, turns sharply, or makes any un- 

 expected movement. His fall in any of these cases will be 

 accelerated by the fact of his holding on in front ; but would 

 be more or less checked by his grasping the cantle, which 

 is, after all, but a choice between two evils, and should there- 

 fore be avoided if possible. 



The following excellent advice, which was written to me by 

 a fine horseman, will, I think, prove instructing to my readers. 

 He says : " I suppose it has struck you, as it has most of us, 

 where the ' taught in ten lessons ' horseman is a too common 

 object in more senses than one that either the teaching 

 must have been terribly bad or that the youths themselves 

 must have been most inapt pupils. I do not think it is the 

 latter ; for these same youths improve wonderfully when they 

 go out to India and get a waler of sorts to bucket about on. 

 It has always seemed to me that the greatest part of bad 

 riding that we see so much of, and the generality of ' bad 

 hands,' is due to the way that men or boys are taught to ride 

 at first. In a school, for instance, the first thing they do to a 

 pupil is to put him on an old rip of a horse with a highly 

 polished saddle, stirrups generally too short, and a mouth 

 attached to a pair of reins to hold himself on by. When 

 the old horse is started off to jog round the school, the 

 pupil begins to slide all over his slippery saddle, and as he 

 goes to the right he keeps himself from falling off by holding 

 on to the inner rein and vice versa,. The second lesson is 

 worse than the first. The would-be horseman is given no 

 saddle, and is made to go round more rapidly ; the subsequent 



