OUGHT CHILDREN TO RIDE ? 



prejudicial system, to encourage your offspring to go in the 

 way of contracting them. As well might you boast of 

 having escaped contagion during an attendance on a fever 

 patient, and then (presuming on your own lucky chance) 

 thrust your children deliberately into an infected house. 

 No ; if you are a wise parent, or guardian, advocate 

 early instruction in pianoforte-playing and its study, 

 also in drawing, painting, and such branches of educa- 

 tion as will expand and benefit the understanding, with- 

 out unduly straining the yet undeveloped resources of 

 the body ; encourage likewise such exercises as are of a 

 healthful and suitable nature— but compel the young folks 

 of whom you have charge to leave riding alone, at all 

 events until the fourteenth year has been well got over : 

 because, just as in singing the vocal organs are weak, and 

 the voice apt to alter and break about that period (which 

 is the case with girls as with boys, although very many 

 fail to know or believe it), so, in like manner, the 

 frame of a young girl is delicate and unstrung, and is 

 absolutely incapable of enduring strain or fatigue without 

 incurring consequences which, even if not made much 

 account of at the time, will most likely in after life cause 

 themselves to be dismally felt. 



About fifteen, or from that to twenty, is an excellent 

 time for a girl to learn to ride— by which I mean that she 

 ought not to attempt it before- the first-mentioned age 

 while the last will not be one whit too late. Boys may 

 begin whenever they choose ; their position on horseback 

 obviates the possibility of growing shoulder-crooked, while 



