ETIQUETTE IN THE SADDLE. 87 



PART II. 



ETIQUETTE IN THE SADDLE. 



There is a large class of excellent people who feel a 

 decided impatience at the very name of etiquette. "It 

 is all nonsense," they say, and they will give you vari- 

 ous infallible receipts for getting on without such an 

 objectionable article. One admonishes you to be " nat- 

 ural," and your manners will leave nothing to be de- 

 sired. Another sagaciously defines politeness to be 

 "kindness kindly expressed," and intimates that if your 

 heart is right your deportment cannot fail to be so too. 

 All these philosophizings, however, give little comfort 

 to the bashful young person just venturing into society, 

 for unfortunately few of us are so happily constituted 

 as always to think, much less to say and do, exactly the 

 right thing at the right time, and the most unobservant 

 presently discovers, very likely at the cost of no small 

 mortification, that the usages of society, even when ap- 

 parently arbitrary, cannot be disregarded with impunity. 

 In the etiquette of the saddle, however, common-sense 

 takes so decidedly precedence of the arbitrary and con- 



