CHAPTER VII 

 HINTS ON RIDING 



"Grace is the result of forgotten toil." 



— Geo. McDonald. 



"There is a great gulf between the amateur and the artist which is 

 never crossed; for the artist is the steward of toil that he may become 

 the master of his craft; while the amateur, by evading the service 

 forfeits the mastery." — Hamilton Wright Mabie. 



If you travel in the Orient, or in our Western States, 

 it will not be long before you become duly convinced 

 that the best natural riders the world over, regardless 

 of their particular and peculiar styles of riding, are 

 those men, those tribes or nations, who, from their 

 youth up, have been the companions of the horse. 

 Nevertheless, while the rider who, as a child, has 

 learned the trick of balancing on a bareback pony is, 

 no doubt, at a great advantage, age is not necessarily 

 an entire bar to learning. I remember one lady who 

 did not take it up until fifty, and another who had 

 never jumped a horse until she was fifty-four, and 

 now actually hunts like blazes. 



Above all, it must be remembered that the best 

 teaching in the world, and all the knowledge gained 

 from reading or hearsay, will be a useless accumula- 

 tion of facts unless one is also able to put them into 

 practical use. An ounce of practice is indeed worth 

 many a pound of theory, for it is practice alone that 

 makes perfect. In riding, as in everything else in life, 

 you cannot become an expert by merely reading, or 

 even by occasional spurts of application. It is impos- 

 sible to perfect yourself by isolated efforts at improve- 



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