agment of an
original line, curve or angle. Thus, and not otherwise, do all
youthful equestrians feel, excepting those doubly-dyed in
conceit, who fancy that they have mastered a whole art in less
than twelve hours. You certainly are not a good rider, and yet
you have received instruction on almost every point in regard to
which you would need to know anything in an ordinary ride on a
good road. You have not yet been taught every one of these
things, certainly, for she who has been really taught a physical
or mental feat, can execute it at will, but you have been partly
instructed, and it is yours to see that the instruction is not
wasted, by not being either repeated, or faithfully reduced to
practice. Remember clever Mrs. Wesley's answer to the unwise
person who said in reproof, "You have told that thing to that
child thirty times." "Had I told it but twenty-nine," replied the
indomitable Susanna, "they had been wasted." What you need now is
practice, preferably in the ring with a teacher, but if you
cannot afford that, without a teacher, and road rides whenever
you can have them on a safe horse, taken from a school stable, if
possible, with companions like yourself, intent upon study and
enjoyment, not upon displaying their habits, or, if they be men,
the airs of their horses, and the correctness of their equipment,
or upon racing.

As for the solitary canter, when the kindly Fates shall endow
that respectable American sovereign, your father, with a park
somewhat bigger than the seventy-five square feet of ground
inclosed by an iron railing before his present palace, it will be
time enough to think about that; but you can no more venture upon
a public road alone than an English lady could, and indeed, your
risk in doing so would be even greater than hers. Why? Because in
rural England all men and boys, even the poorest and the
humblest, seem to know instinctively how a horse should be
equipped. True, a Wordsworth or a Coleridge did hesitate for
hours over the problem of adjusting a horse collar, but Johnny
Ragamuffin, from the slums, or Jerry Hickathrift, of some shire
with the most uncouth of dialects, can adjust a slipping saddle,
or, in a hand's turn, can remove a stone which is torturing a
hoof.

Not so your American wayfarer, city bred or country grown; it
will be wonderful if he can lengthen a stirrup leather, ad,
before allowing such an one to tighten a girth for you, you would
better alight and take she