8 RIDING FOR LADIES. 



The frame of a child, even the most robust, is too weakly 

 and delicate — too liable to grow " out of form " — to render 

 equestrian exercise a fitting pursuit for persons of tender 

 age. Nature has not ruled that her frail handiwork shall be 

 roughly or unfairly strained, and when it is, the penalty is 

 certain to follow, in disarranged system, weakened or injured 

 muscular development, misplaced shoulder-blades, undue 

 tension of the tendons of the left leg — or contraction of them, 

 which is worse — accompanied by an unnatural languor 

 and a constant craving for permission " to go and lie down," 

 which, in so many cases, children are observed to manifest. 



The absurd assertion that no girl can excel as a horse- 

 woman unless she begins to practise the art when a child 

 has been so often and substantially refuted that to attempt 

 further contradiction of it would be merely to entail loss of 

 time. Suffice it to say that some of the finest equestrians 

 the world has ever produced have been entirely ignorant of 

 riding until after their arrival at womanhood, or, at all 

 events, until childish days had been left far in the rear. 

 Of these a foreign Empress is a noteworthy example, while 

 many others, whose names in park and hunting-field are 

 familiar as household words, might go to swell the list. 



" Well, but really " — I fancy I hear some unconvinced 

 matron saying — " I cannot see that my children are any- 

 thing the worse for riding every day. I myself rode 

 when I was their age, and it never seemed to do me 

 any harm." Granted, madam ; but question yourself, 

 whether you have a right, because yoit have had the good 

 fortune to escape the evils usually consequent upon a 



