52 PINK AND SCARLET 



professional career, so the sooner he has one and 

 gets used to it the better. Learning to ride is not 

 easy at the time of life when an Infantry soldier 

 becomes a mounted officer, and a man who puts it 

 off so long does not, as a rule, learn to ride at all, 

 though he may succeed in learning to be carried by 

 his horse. Passengers are of little use in the 

 navigation of a ship, or the driving of a train, and 

 a man who is merely a passenger on his horse 

 cannot command a battalion properly, even in the 

 barrack square. In the field he stamps it with his 

 own want of mobility. On active service the same 

 fault, by glueing him to his command, and thus 

 restricting his power of personal reconnoitring, and 

 limiting his range of vision, may lead to bad use of 

 the ground, surprise, and thence disaster. 



If questioned about his advice as to choosing a 

 horse for oneself, Whyte- Melville would no doubt 

 have said, that of course he meant a man with know- 

 ledge of horses, and above all one who had in his 

 mind's eye the sort of horse he wanted. Our young 

 friend can scarcely have the one or the other, and 

 if he thinks he has, let him remember that experience 

 with horses, as with life in general, tends to show 

 us that the more we learn the more we find how 

 little we know. Therefore let him go to some one 

 with the knowledge got from experience, and say, 

 " I weigh so much, I ride well (indifferently or 

 badly), I want to hunt with so-and-so hounds, and 

 I can afford to give so much ; will you help me to 

 find a horse ? " 



