RIDING ENGLISH FASHION 245 



of to-day is coming back from the very short stirrups he 

 used to consider essential to fox-hunting, to a seat much 

 more like the bareback. 



Talking of sticking out the toes, since the abolition of 

 the old style, every rider is subject to the habit. I can 

 remember when the rule was to keep the feet parallel 

 with the horse — a thing never now done, and, be it ac- 

 knowledged, rarely kept to then. We Americans have the 

 only cavalry which rides with hooded wooden stirrups. 

 Perhaps these are not handsome j^^r ^e; but any soldier 

 who has ridden day after day with the thermometer ever 

 so far below zero will bless the man who first invented 

 this protection against frozen feet. And, moreover, if a 

 man is going to turn out his toes, our hooded stirrup 

 quite hides the trick which a brass stirrup makes unduly 

 prominent. 



The French officers have, of late years, all taken to the 

 English saddle, and ride ostentatiously d VAnglaise, a 

 regular " to cover " gait. There is, all the travelled world 

 over nowadays, nothing more marked than the influence 

 of all tilings British. In my early European tours in the 

 fifties, the Englishman, and especially the English maiden, 

 were outrageously caricatured. The Briton was the butt 

 of all comic stories ; he was the stock-in-trade of the ra- 

 conteur ; proverbial philosophy was fairly shot at him ; 

 nothing about him was acceptable but that universal 

 panacea, the £ sterling. But now the tide has set in his 

 favor ; everything everywhere is so English, you know ; 

 not only his beefsteaks and his tweed suits, but his man- 

 ners and his horsemanship are in every section of the 

 habitable globe ; you are even invited in France to Jive 

 o'doquer with your lady friends. The countries the Briton 

 has overrun have found that he possesses other sterling qual- 

 ities besides the £ s. d. And well it is. An infusion of good 



