RIDING RECOLLECTIONS 



do little without the assistance of legs and knees 

 pressing the sides and flanks of the animal, so as 

 to urge him against the touch of his bit, from 

 which he will probably show a tendency to recoil, 

 and, as it is roughly called, " forcing him into his 

 bridle." 



The absence of this leg-power is an incalculable 

 disadvantage to ladies, and affords the strongest 

 reason, amongst many, why they should be 

 mounted only on temperate and perfectly broken 

 horses. How much oftener would they come to 

 grief but that their seat compels them to ride with 

 such long reins as insure light hands, and that 

 their finer sympathy seems fully understood and 

 gratefully appreciated by the most sympathetic of 

 all the brute creation ! 



The style adopted by good horsewomen, 

 especially in crossing a country, has in it much to 

 be admired, something, also, to be deprecated and 

 deplored. They allow their horses plenty of 

 liberty, and certainly interfere but little with their 

 heads, even at the greatest emergencies ; but 

 their ideas of pace are unreasonably liberal, and 

 they are too apt to "chance it" at the fences, 

 encouraging with voice and whip the haste that in 

 the last few strides it is judicious to repress. It 

 seems to me they are safer in a bank-and-ditch 

 country than amongst the high strong fences of 

 the grazing districts, where a horse must be roused 



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