SEAT 



attaining a firm seat on horseback is, after all, to 

 practise without stirrups on every available 

 opportunity. Many a valuable lesson may be 

 taken while riding to covert and nobody but the 

 student be a bit the wiser. Thus to trot and 

 canter along, for two or three miles on end, is no 

 bad training at the beginning of the season, and 

 even an experienced horseman will be surprised 

 to find how it gets him down in his saddle, and 

 makes him feel as much at home there as he did 

 in the previous March. 



The late Captain Percy Williams, as brilliant a 

 rider over a country as ever cheered a hound, and 

 to whom few professional jockeys would have 

 cared to give five pounds on a racecourse, assured 

 me that he attributed to the above self-denying 

 exercise that strength in the saddle which used to 

 serve him so well from the distance home. When 

 quartered at Hounslow with his regiment, the 9th 

 Lancers, like other gay young light dragoons he 

 liked to spend all his available time in London. 

 There were no railroads in those days, and the 

 coaches did not always suit for time ; but he 

 owned a sound, speedy, high-trotting hack, and 

 on this "bone-setter " he travelled backwards and 

 forwards twelve miles of the great Bath Road, 

 with military regularity, half as many times a 

 week. He made it a rule to cross the stirrups 

 over his horse's shoulders the moment he was off 



lOI 



