THE BARB AND THE BRIDLE. 3 



Although the advantages and opportunities I speak of, however, 

 render words of advice upon female equitation unnecessary to ladies 

 of the sangre azul, I trust they may be foimd useful to others who 

 may not have had such opportunities. 



In the upper middle classes nothing is more probable than the 

 marriage of one of the daughters of the house with a man whose 

 future lot may be cast in the colonies, where if a woman cannot ride 

 she will be sorely at a loss. Unlike the ladies of high degree above 

 alluded to, the daughter of a man in good position in the middle 

 class will often not have opportunities of learning to ride until she is 

 fifteen or sixteen, and by this time the youthful frame, supple as it 

 may appear, has acquired (so to speak) " a set," which at first 

 renders riding far from agreeable ; because it calls into action whole 

 sets of muscles and ligaments heretofore rarely brought into play, or 

 rather only partially so. Hence the unpleasant stiffness that always 

 follows the first essays of the tyro in riding of the age I speak of, 

 and which painful feeling too often so discourages beginners that 

 they give up the thing in disgust. 



Now this unpleasant consequence of the first lessons may be easily 

 obviated by the following means. Bearing in mind that pain or 

 stiffness is the result of want of supplesse, the first desideratum is to 

 acquire this most desirable elasticity. To accomplish this, three 

 months before the pupil is put on horseback she should begin a 

 course of training in suppling and extension motions on foot, pre- 

 cisely similar to those drilled into a cavalry recruit in the army. No 

 amount of dancing will do what is required. Even the professional 

 danseuse, with her constant exercise of the ronde de jamhe, never 

 possesses that mobile action of the waist and play of the joints of the 

 upper part of the figure so thoroughly tabe acquired by the exercises 

 I speak of, which also have the further greater advantage of giving 

 development and expansion to the chest. I therefore respectfully 

 advise every careful mother, who is desirous of seeing her daughters 

 become accomplished horsewomen, before taking them to the riding 

 master (of whom more hereafter), in the first place to employ a good 

 drUl master. 



Possibly, the young ladies may have had drill instruction at 



B 2 



