92 NEW METHOD OF HORSEMANSHIP. 



treason against horsemanship. So the riders kept their 

 ignorance and the horses their bad equilibrium ; and if 

 any one succeeded, after two or three years of routine 

 labor, in making certain horses of a privileged organiza- 

 tion start with the desired foot, and in making them 

 change feet finally, at a fixed point, the difficulty then 

 was to prevent them from always repeating this move- 

 ment at the same place. 



Thus it is that the most palpable errors gain credit, 

 and often are perpetuated, until there comes a practical 

 mind, gifted with some amount of common sense, who 

 contradicts by practice all the learned theories of its pre- 

 decessors. They try hard at first to deny the knowledge 

 of the innovator ; but the masses who instinctively know 

 the true, and judge from what they see, soon range them- 

 selves on his side, turn their backs upon his detractors, 

 and leave them to their solitude and vain pretensions. 



To the mass of horsemen I address myself, when I 

 say, either the horse is under the influence of your forces, 

 and entirely submissive to your power, or you are strug- 

 gling with him. If he gallops off" with you, without 

 your being able to modify or direct with certainty his 

 course, it proves that, although subject to a certain 

 extent to your power in thus consenting to carry you 

 about, he, nevertheless, uses his instinctive forces. In 

 this case, there is a perpetual fight going on between 

 you and him, the chancC'S of which depend on the tem- 

 perament and caprice of the animal, upon the good or 

 bad state of his digestion. Changes of foot, in such a 

 state, can only be obtained by inclining the horse very 

 much to one side, which makes the movement both diffi- 

 cult and ungraceful. 



If, on the contrary, the animal is made submissive to a 

 degree that he cannot contract any one of his parts 



