ch. xv 349 



CHAPTER XV 

 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON DRIVING 



Although a boy may acquire confidence and 

 learn a great deal about horses and driving, by 

 ' knocking about' and finding out things for himself, 

 the beginner should not fail to take lessons from the 

 most competent teacher that he can find. That man 

 who thinks he can deduce from his ' inner conscious- 

 ness' all the knowledge which is the result of the 

 long experience, and the accumulated ingenuity, of 

 generations of performers, is assuming a great deal. 

 Every art is perfected by the successive inventions 

 of its masters, which, observed by or communicated 

 to one another, are slowly formed into a system 

 much more perfect than it is possible for any one 

 man to create for himself. A self-taught man inevi- 

 tably contracts bad habits which he will find very 

 difficult to abandon, even when he knows the better 

 way, and the longer he drives without competent 

 criticism the more fixed these bad habits become. 



There is no teacher so good as a professional 

 teacher ; he is paid to do what even a very skilful 

 friend is not willing: to do : — find fault, in addition to 

 giving instruction. A pupil should make up his 

 mind to do precisely what his instructor tells him, 

 as long as he is driving with him ; to drive with a 



