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
a