Seat 9 1 



marked, as if no other way had ever occurred to him. 

 ** Would you have a person ride with one hand hanging on 

 to the pommel of the saddle ? Gripping with both legs 

 against the tiaps of the saddle amounts to the same thing." 



Riding by however slight a grip has neither theory nor 

 practical results to recommend it ; and it is passing strange 

 that hardly a riding-school teacher and no writer that I 

 have ever found sees the matter in this light. Whyte- 

 Melville, in his " Riding Recollections," advocates a com- 

 bination of grip and balance. To depend upon balance, 

 he says, " is to come home with a dirty coat ; to cling wholly 

 to grip is to court as much fatigue in a day as should serve 

 for a week." On another page, however, he spoils his argu- 

 ment by saying, apropos of grace, that " the loose and 

 easy seat that serves to sway carelessly with every motion, 

 yet can tighten itself by instinct to the compression of a 

 vice, — the prettiest riders, as they say in Ireland, — are prob- 

 ably the ones whom a kicker or a bush-jumper would find 

 most difficult to dislodge." 



It is a pity to see the naturally secure and graceful seat 

 of a self-taught American ruined by his going to riding- 

 school. A person may be longer learning to sit a horse by 

 balance than to hold on by grip, but if he gives himself up 

 to riding by balance, which is only another way of saying 

 gives his body up to the care of the law of self-preservation, 

 he has eventually every advantage in point of security or 

 safety of seat over the man who is holding on by conscious 

 grip. When a person rides by balance, this law of self- 

 preservation, many times quicker than thought, looks after 

 him just as it does when he is on his feet and walking. 



