ten thousand. Try
them in driving. There the terret-pad prevents their being given
incorrectly, and a bearing-rein, a severe bit, and a whip, give you
every advantage in keeping your horse collected; yet you will find them
wholly inefficient. The soldier, who is compelled to turn to the right
by word of command, when the correct indication is unanswered, in
despair throws his hand to the right. The consequence is, that no horse
is a good soldier's horse, till he has been trained to turn on the wrong
rein.

[Sidenote: Common riders turn on the wrong rein.]

Without the same excuse for it, the same may be said of all ladies and
civilians who ride with one hand only, and of almost all who ride with
two hands. For, strange to say, in turning, both hands are generally
passed to the right or left, and I have known many of what may be called
the most perfect straight-_forward_ hands; that is, men who on the turf
would hold the most difficult three-year-old to the steady stroke of the
two-mile course, and place him as a winner to half-a-length--who in the
hunting-field would ride the hottest, or the most phlegmatic made
hunter, with equal skill, through all difficulties of ground, and over
every species of fence, with admirable precision and equality of
hand--or who on the exercise ground would place his broken charger on
his haunches, and make him walk four miles an hour, canter six and a
half, trot eight and a half, and gallop eleven, without being out in
either pace a second of time, but who marred all by the besetting sin of
side-feeling--of turning the horse on the wrong rein. The consequence
is, that they can ride nothing but what has been trained to answer the
wrong indications.

[Sidenote: Result of this with colts or restive horses.]

This is something like steaming without steering. Set them on a finely
broken horse, on a colt, or a restive horse, and they become helpless
children--the powerless prisoners of the brutes they bestride. How often
does one see one's acquaintance in this distressing situation, with
courage enough to dare what man dare, but without the power to do what
the rough-rider has just done! First comes the false indication of the
rider, then the confusion and hesitation of the horse; next the violence
of the rider; then the despair and rebellion of the horse. The finish is
a fractured limb from a rear or a runaway. The poor brute is set down as
restive and in fact becomes more or less a misant