i:;o RIDING FOR LADIES. 



an unknown staircase, or go in and out among obstacles 

 that you cannot see. Ten to one you will make a blunder, 

 and come down ; whereas, had you been left your head, your 

 progress would in all probability have been perfectly easy 

 and safe. I hope I shall succeed in making my meaning 

 distinctly understood in this matter, because it really is a 

 most important one. I just want to illustrate the difference 

 between permitting an animal to go all abroad (or what 

 Tom Cannon calls " slummucking ")— and reining him in 

 so very tightly that he cannot see where he is expected to 

 plant his feet. On your complete knowledge of this 

 essential subject, one-half, if not more, of your success as a 

 horsewoman must inevitably depend, and in my anxiety 

 that you should grasp the meaning of it, I may, perhaps, 

 be found fault with for referring to it too often, or for 

 speaking of it in too homely a fashion. This is, I am 

 aware, an age of false refinement : one in which a writer 

 has to grapple with extraordinary difficulties, being stig- 

 matised as " coarse " when he ventures to set forth home 

 and useful truths, and "vulgar" when he writes humor- 

 ously or introduces a spice of fun. Now, it is not my way 

 to care in the least whether or not such terms are applied 

 to me by outsiders (my friends can judge for themselves) 



but I would a good deal rather any day be a " vulgar " 



practical writer, doing some good in my generation, than a 

 "refined" useless one, and I think it necessary to make 

 reference to the matter in this place, because I have 

 a o-reat deal yet to say on subjects connected with the one 

 on which I am writing, and if I am to dress up my 



