8o Scats and Saddles. 



pertaining more properly to the department of practical 

 instruction, is so intimately connected with the matters 

 we have just now been discussing, that it is impossible 

 to pass it over without a few words ; it is this : Should 

 we give our first instruction in riding with or without 

 stirrups? The advocates of beginning without stirrups 

 say you must first give the pupil a seat, and then, when 

 he has acquired balance and a hold of his horse, you 

 can give him the additional assistance of the stirrups. 

 Now the most difficult thing to attain is balance, and 

 the stirrup was devised for the purpose of assisting in 

 acquiring and maintaining it; and it is, therefore, just 

 as reasonable to act in this manner as it would be to set 

 a boy to learn swimming without corks or bladders, and 

 when he had learned to support himself in the water 

 give him these artificial aids ; and this is seldom thought 

 rational. But there is another objection — namely, that 

 the pupil first acquires one seat, and afterward is ex- 

 pected to change it for another and better one. Why 

 not begin at first with this ? Every practical cavalry 

 officer knows that it is much easier to teach a man that 

 has never been on horseback than one who has ac- 

 quired methods of his own, which give the instructor 

 the double work of unteaching and teaching. Of course 

 if the people ride at home nearly in the same way and 

 in the same kind of saddle that they are required to do 

 in the ranks — as, for instance, the Hungarians, Cossacks 

 and others — this does not apply ; but with all Western 

 nations of Europe it does. It is highly probable that 

 the English system of hanging the stirrups far forward 

 in the saddle has been adopted, partially at least, for the 

 purpose of adapting these instruments to a seat acquired 

 iviihout them — that is to say, to a purpose they were 

 not intended for. Long experience in training recruits 

 has resulted in the conviction that it is xnuch better, and 

 in the end more expeditious, to giv^ the young rider 



