■ A COUNTRY BUMPKIN 



impossible to the end of the chapter, this rider is the very 

 pattern of how not to do it. Take the rider on the big 

 gray in the " Horse Fair," and compare him with one of the 

 riders in the Panathenaic procession ! How can two men 

 doing the same thing be so at odds ? And yet each would 

 cast a slur at the other's horsemanship. 



Qui i excuse s'accuse, and I do not wish to offer an apol- 

 ogy for what, in the following pages, may often on the 

 surface appear to be dogmatic. I hope that my brothers 

 in horsemanship will absolve me from narrowness — in all 

 things easily the first of vices. I have put a girdle round 

 the earth ; I have ridden with all kinds and conditions of 

 men, from Mexican vacjuero to Arab sheik ; I have thrown 

 my leg across every species of mount, from a bronco to a 



