176 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 
or of attempting feats out of mere bravado, though 
one’s self be the only spectator. ‘The true rule is 
neither to go out of your way to meet danger, nor 
to decline the opportunity when it comes. Anybody 
who is much in the saddle will sooner or later find 
an occasion to test his mettle; and if one have the 
happiness to play polo, or, more especially, to ride 
to hounds, such occasions will be frequent. Of all 
the manly arts, horsemanship is the one where mere 
strength and size count the least, and skill and cour- 
age the most. 
A small, weak man with “hands” can manage a 
beast which a big, strong man without them cannot 
keep from running away. On the other hand, muscle 
and endurance have full scope in the saddle. Asshe- 
ton Smith used to tumble his hunters over fences too 
high to be jumped; for nearly fifty years he averaged 
about fifty falls a season, and yet he never received 
more than one serious injury. Assheton Smith was 
a born fox-hunter; but other men, handicapped by 
nature, have shown their prowess in the saddle. To 
think of Anthony Trollope, riding “straight, ” though 
old and half blind, and sounding, as he humorously 
said, the depths of every ditch in Essex, —to re- 
member such achievements is to raise one’s standard 
of human courage and pertinacity. 
The late R. H. Dana used to say that every man 
ought at least once in his life to face death. For the 
modern man, sport must commonly supply, if not 
a proximity to death, at least a certain hardness of 
experience which in former ages war, or travel, or 
tournaments, or duels afforded. There is a keen joy 
which civilization seems to whet, rather than ‘to 
