22 Equestrian Delusions. 



let you walk whither your own fancy dictates, for 

 I am lazily inclined ; though indeed I know from 

 your tossing head that you fain would go a live- 

 lier gait. So long as you can walk your four full 

 miles an hour, you will have to curb your ardor 

 for many a long stretch, while your master chews 

 the cud of sweet and bitter fancies. 



As we saunter along, the reflections bred of 

 thirty odd years in the saddle come crowding up. 

 From a Shelty with a scratch-pack in Surrey a 

 generation since, to many a cavalry charge with 

 bugle-clash and thundering tread on Old Domin- 

 ion soil now twenty years ago, the daily life with 

 that best of friends, — save always one, — the per- 

 fect saddle horse, brings many thoughts to mind. 

 What if we jot them down ? 



II. 



The most common delusion under which the 

 average equestrian is apt to labor in every part of 

 the world is that his own style of riding is the 

 one par excellence. Whether the steeple chaser 

 on his thoroughbred, or the Indian on his mus- 

 tang is the better rider, cannot well be decided. 

 The peculiar horsemanship of every country has 

 its manifest advantages, and is the natural out- 

 growth of, as well as peculiarly adapted to, the 

 climate, roads, and uses to which the horse is put. 



