THE TROT. 61 



you may be almost sure you have fallen into the too 

 common feminine practice of bearing too much of your 

 weight on one side. An even balance in the saddle is 

 of capital importance, and a rough-and-ready test is to 

 observe whether the buttons of your habit are in the 

 same plane as the horse's backbone, and your shoulders 

 nearly equidistant from his ears — points of which you 

 can judge as well as any one. 



In the matter of the horse's gait you must be equally 

 exacting, not resting so long as you can perceive the 

 slightest irregularity or difference between the strides. 

 It is desirable to cultivate such a sensitiveness to all 

 the horse's movements as will enable you to know 

 where his feet are at all times without looking, and the 

 first step towards this is to learn to "sit close to the 

 saddle." This firm and easy seat, coveted by every 

 rider, is attained by some with much greater difficulty 

 than by others. Many riders will bump about on their 

 saddles for thousands of miles without being "shaken 

 into their seat," because they neither abandon them- 

 selves to the instinct which correctly guides a child, 

 nor, on the other hand, seek out and remove the cause, 

 in the muscular contractions of the body and limbs. 



A loose sack of grain set upright on horseback does 

 not jump up and down, and, while it is not desirable to 

 be quite so inert as a bag of grain, yet a lesson may be 

 learned from it — which is, that the lower part of the 

 person, from the hips to the knees, should be kept firm- 



