182 LESSONS FOR BEGINNERS. 



horse get once hung on it, he would as soon be hung 

 as get there again, when he has been taught how to 

 avoid it ; for before he can get off again, he will be 

 in the situation I well know you are after a suit of 

 Chancery, where, though you gain your cause, you 

 are very comfortably skinned before you do so. Peo- 

 ple will put a bar up perhaps three feet high, and 

 say "he can jump that if he can jump anything." 

 We know that ; but at first he cannot jump anything 

 in height, at least he does not know that he can, never 

 having probably tried ; so, as to him, it seems an im- 

 passable barrier : he naturally enough does not try ; 

 but he tries to shove it down ; if it gives way, he is 

 spoiled ; if not, he is flogged because he does not do 

 what he does not know how to set about doing. He 

 then probably turns sulky, and kicks at you : then he 

 gets flogged for that ; so he gets twice flogged, as 

 boys often do at cheap schools, from the ignorance of 

 his tutor. If the horse never saw a bar before, lay 

 it on the ground yes, positively on the ground; you 

 will see he will make a jump even at that : probably 

 that would have carried him over two feet. He has 

 already learned two things at this one jump ; namely, 

 that by jumping he gets over the obstacle, and that 

 he can jump two feet high: this even he did not 

 know before : raise it six inches, he will take it next 

 time at that height: let him do that two or three 

 times, caress him, and send him away : he has done 

 enough for his first lesson, and has learned a good 

 deal. Put it on the ground again next day : you are 

 sure he will not refuse that: then again the six 

 inches; then a foot, and so on: he will take three 

 feet in a week, and very shortly the height of a gate. 

 Another horse may at the end of a fortnight have 

 been driven and flogged over as great or a greater 



