ion of those worn by German
princesses, when, at a review, they lead the regiments which they
command. Then, their habits may be frogged and braided with gold,
or they may fire the air in habit and hat of white and scarlet,
the regimental colors, as the Empress of Germany did the other
day. If you were sure of riding as these royal ladies do, perhaps
even white and scarlet might be permitted to you, but can you
fancy yourself, Esmeralda, sweeping across a parade ground with a
thousand horsemen behind you, and ready to salute your sovereign
and commander-in-chief at the right moment, and to go forward
with as much precision as if you, too, were one of those
magnificently drilled machines brought into being by the man of
blood and iron?

XIII.

'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools.
_Swift_.

If American children and American girls were the angels which
their mothers and their lovers tell them that they are, the best
possible riding master for them would be an American soldier who
had learned and taught riding at West Point. Being of the same
race, pupil and teacher would have that vast fund of common
memories, hopes and feelings; that common knowledge of character,
of good qualities and of defects, and that ability to divine
motives and to predict action which constitute perfect sympathy,
and their relations to one another would be mutually agreeable
and profitable. Unfortunately, Esmeralda, you, like possibly some
other American girls, are not an angel, and if you were, you
could not have such a riding master, because the very few men who
have the specified qualifications are too well acquainted with
the characteristics of their countrywomen to instruct them in the
equestrian art. Who, then, shall be his substitute? Clearly,
either a person sufficiently patient and clever to neutralize the
faults of American women, or one capable of adapting himself to
them, of eluding them, and of forcing a certain quantity of
knowledge upon his pupils, almost in spite of themselves. The
former is hardly to be found among natives of the United States;
the latter can be found nowhere else, except, possibly, in
certain English shires in which the inhabitants so closely
resemble the average American that when they immigrate hither
they are scarcely distinguishable from men whose ancestors came
two or three centuries ago.

A foreign teacher, whether French, German, or Hungarian, a