Riding with the Pack

Impatient to mount and ride.

Longfellow.

And you want to learn how to ride, Esmeralda?

Why? Because? Reason good and sufficient, Esmeralda; to require anything more definite would be brutal, although an explanation of your motives would render the task of directing you much easier.

As you are an American, it is reasonable to presume that you desire to learn quickly; as you are youthful, it is certain that you earnestly wish to look pretty in the saddle, and as you are a youthful American, there is not a shadow of a doubt that your objections to authoritative teaching will be almost unconquerable, and that you will insist upon being treated, from the very beginning, as if your small head contained the knowledge of a Hiram Woodruff or of an Archer. Perhaps you may find a teacher who will comply with your wishes; who will be exceedingly deferential to your little whims; will unhesitatingly accept your report of your own sensations and your hypotheses as to their cause; and, Esmeralda, when once your eyes behold that model man, be content, and go and take lessons of another, for either he is a pretentious humbug, careless of everything except his fees, or he is an ignoramus.

It may not be necessary that you should be insulted or ridiculed in order to become a rider, although there are girls who seem utterly impervious by teaching by gentle methods. Is it not a matter of tradition that Queen Victoria owes her regal carriage to the rough drill-sergeant who, with no effect upon his pupil, horrified her governess, and astonished her, by sharply saying: "A pretty Queen you'll make with that dot-and-go-one gait!" Up went the little chin, back went the shoulders, down went the elbows, and, in her wrath, the little princess did precisely what the old soldier had been striving to make her do; but his delighted cry of "Just right!" was a surprise to her, inasmuch as she had been conscious of no muscular effort whatsoever. From that time forth, incessit regina.

You may not need such rough treatment, but it is necessary that you should be corrected every moment and almost every second until you learn to correct yourself, until every muscle in your body becomes self-conscious, and until an improper position is almost instantly felt as uncomfortable, and the teacher who does not drill you steadily and continuously, permits you to fall into bad habits.

If you were a German princess, Esmeralda, you would be compelled to sit in the saddle for many an hour without touching the reins, while your patient horse walked around a tan bark ring, and you balanced yourself and straightened yourself, and adjusted arms, shoulders, waist, knees and feet, under the orders of a drill-sergeant, who might, indeed, sugar-coat his phrases with "Your Highness," but whose intonations would say "You must," as plainly as if he were drilling an awkward squad of peasant recruits. If you were the daughter of a hundred earls, you would be mounted on a Shetland pony and shaken into a good seat long before you outgrew short frocks, and afterwards you would be trained by your mother or older sisters, by the gentlemen of your family, or perhaps, by some trusted old groom, or in a good London riding-school, and, no matter who your instructor might be, you would be compelled to be submissive and obedient.

But you object that you cannot afford to pay for very careful, minute, and long-continued training; that you must content yourself with such teaching as you can obtain by riding in a ring under the charge of two or three masters, receiving such instruction as they find time to give you while maintaining order and looking after an indefinite number of other pupils. Your real teacher in that case must be yourself, striving assiduously to obey every order given to you, no matter whether it appears unreasonable or seems, as the Concord young woman said, "in accordance with the latest scientific developments and the esoteric meaning of differentiated animal existences." That sentence, by the way, silenced her master, and nearly caused him to have a fit of illness from suppression of language, but perhaps it might affect your teacher otherwise, and you would better reserve it for that private mental rehearsal of your first lesson which you will conduct in your maiden meditation.

You are your own best teacher, you understand, and you may be encouraged to know that one of the foremost horsemen in the country says: "I have had many teachers, but my best master was here," touching his forehead. "Where do you ride, sir?" asked one of his pupils, after vainly striving with reins and whip, knee, heel and spur to execute a movement which the master had compelled his horse to perform while apparently holding himself as rigid as bronze. "I ride here, sir," was the grim answer, with another tap on the forehead.

And first, Esmeralda, being feminine, you wish to know what you are to wear.