482 WOMEN ASTRADDLE 



to fall and stay in place by its own weight, and cut so 

 snugly in the seat as not to drag upward when in the 

 saddle. This skirt — though 1 had no chance to make a 

 sartorial investigation — must have been a mere pair of 

 excessively loose trousers, gradually widening to the feet, 

 which latter, when mounted, could just be seen. The 

 lassies used the common man's rig, and rode upright and 

 well. 



Still, nothing that I have ever seen since has impressed 

 me so strongly as a beautiful portrait of herself which a 

 lovely old lady once showed me, some forty years ago, in 

 Silesia. She was painted riding astride, as all women in 

 her youth had done in that part of the world, with long 

 flowing Turkish-style trousers, and mounted on a spirited 

 Arabian. It may have been the impressionableness of 

 youth — the inflammability, I might say — which has made 

 the portrait keep its place so freshly in my mind, but I 

 remember it well, and as the sole pattern worthy of copy- 

 ing which I have ever seen. This was a picture, however. 

 I have never seen a woman astride a horse whom I 

 thouufht a ffood model for universal imitation. 



