Bring forth the horse!
_Byron_.
Being ready to start, Esmeralda, the question now arises: "Is a
riding school," as the girl asked about the new French play, "a
place to which one can take her mother?" Little girls too young
to dress themselves should be attended by their mothers or by
their maids, but an older girl no more needs guardianship at
riding-school than at any other place at which she receives
instruction, and there is no more reason why her mother should
follow her into the ring than into the class-room.
Her presence, even if she preserve absolute silence, will
probably embarrass both teacher and pupil, and although her own
children may not be affected by it, it will be decidedly
troublesome to the children of other mothers.
If, instead of being quiet, she talk, and it is the nature of the
mother who accompanies her daughter to riding-school to talk
volubly and loudly, she will become a nuisance, and even a source
of actual danger, by distracting the attention of the master from
his pupils, and the attention of the pupils from their horses, to
say nothing of the possibility that some of her pretty, ladylike
screams of, "Oh, darling, I know you're tired!" or, "Oh, what a
horrid horse; see him jump!" may really frighten some lucky
animal whose acquaintance has included no women but the sensible.
If she be inclined to laugh at the awkward beginners, and to
ridicule them audibly--but really, Esmeralda, it should not be
necessary to consider such an action, impossible in a well-bred
woman, unlikely in a woman of good feeling! Leave your mother, if
not at home, in the dressing-room or the reception room, and go
to the mounting-stand alone.
In some schools you may ride at any time, but the usual morning
hours for ladies' lessons are from nine o'clock to noon, and the
afternoon hours from two o'clock until four. Some masters prefer
that their pupils should have fixed days and hours for their
lessons, and others allow the very largest liberty. For your own
sake it is better to have a regular time for your lessons, but if
you cannot manage to do so, do not complain if you sometimes have
to wait a few minutes for your horse, or for your master.
The school is not carried on entirely for your benefit, although
you will at first assume that it is. As a rule, a single lesson
will cost two dollars, but a ten-lesson ticket will cost but
fifteen dollars, a twenty-lesson ticket twenty-five dollars, and
a ticket for twenty exercise rides twenty dollars. In schools
which give music-rides, there are special rates for the evenings
upon which they take place, but you need not think of music-rides
until you have had at least the three lessons which you desire.
Buy your ticket before you go to the dressing-room, and ask if
you may have a key to a locker. Dress as quickly as you can, and
if there be no maid in the dressing-room, lock up your street
clothing and keep your key. If there be a maid, she will attend
to this matter, and will assist you in putting on your skirt,
showing you that it buttons on the left side, and that you must
pin it down the basque of your jersey or your jacket in the back,
unless you desire it to wave wildly with every leap of your
horse. Flatter not yourself that lead weights will prevent this!
When a horse begins a canter that sends you, if your feelings be
any gauge, eighteen good inches nearer the ceiling, do you think
that an ounce of lead will remain stationary? give a final touch
to your hairpins and hatpins, button your gloves, pull the rubber
straps of your habit over your right toe and left heel, and you
are ready.
In most schools, you will be made to mount from the ground, and
you will find it surprisingly and delightfully easy to you. What
it may be to the master who puts you into the saddle is another
matter, but nine out of ten teachers will make no complaint, and
will assure you that they do very well.
If you wish to deceive any other girl's inconsiderate mother whom
you may find comfortably seated in a good position for criticism,
and to make her suppose that you are an old rider, keep silence.
Do not criticise your horse or his equipments, do not profess
inability to mount, but when you master says "Now!" step forward
and stand facing in the same direction of your horse, placing
your right hand on the upper pommel of the two on the left of the
saddle.
Set your left foot in whichever hand he holds out for it. Some
masters offer the left, some the right, and some count for a
pupil, and others prefer that she should count for yourself. The
usual "One, two, three!" means, one, rest the weight strongly on
the right foot; two, bend the right knee, keeping the body
perfectly erect; three, spring up from the right foot, turning
very slightly to the left, so as to place yourself sideways on
the saddle, your right hand toward the horse's head.
Some masters offer a shoulder as a support for a pupil's left
hand, and some face toward the horse's head and some toward his
tail, so it is best for you to wait a little for directions,
Esmeralda, and not to suppose that, because you know all about
Lucy Fountain's way of mounting a horse, or about James Burdock's
tuition of Mabel Vane, there is no other method of putting a lady
in the saddle.
After your first lesson, you will find it well to practise
springing upward from the right foot, holding your left on
a hassock, or a chair rung, your right hand raised as if
grasping the pommel, your shoulders carefully kept back, and
your body straight. It is best to perform this exercise before
a mirror, and when you begin to think you have mastered it,
close you eyes, give ten upward springs and then look at
yourself. A hopeless wreck, eh? Not quite so bad as that, but,
before, you unconsciously corrected your position by the eye,
and you must learn to do it entirely by feeling. You will
probably improve very much on a second trial, because your
shoulders will begin to be sensitive. Why not practise this
exercise before your first lesson? Because you should know just
how your master prefers to stand, in order to be able to
imagine him standing as he really will. It is not unusual to
see riders of some experience puzzled and made awkward by an
innovation on what they have regarded as the true and only
method of mounting, although, when once the right leg and wrist
are properly trained, a woman ought to be able to reach the
saddle without caring what her escort's method of assistance.
Mounting from a high horseblock is a matter of being fairly
lifted into the saddle, and you cannot possibly do it improperly.
it is easy, but it gives you no training for rides outside the
school, and masters use it, not because they approve of it, but
because their pupils, not knowing how easy it is to mount from
the ground, often desire it.
But, being in the saddle, turn so as to face your horse's head,
put our right knee over the pommel, and slip your left foot into
the stirrup. Then rise on your left foot and smooth your skirt, a
task in which your master will assist you, and take you reins and
your whip from him.
How shall you hold your reins? As your master tells you!
Probably, he will give you but one rein at first, and very likely
will direct you to hold it in both hands, keeping them five or
six inches apart, the wrists on a level with the elbows or even a
very little lower, and he is not likely to insist on any other
details, knowing that it will be difficult for you to attain
perfection in these. An English master might give you a single
rein to be passed outside the little finger, and between the
forefinger and the middle finger, the loop coming between the
forefinger and thumb, and being held in place by the thumb. Then
he would expect you to keep your right shoulder back very firmly,
but a French master will tell you that it is better to learn to
keep the shoulder back a little while holding a rein in the right
hand, and an American master will usually allow you to take your
choice, but, until you have experience, obey orders in silence.
And now, having taken your whip, draw yourself back in your
saddle so as to feel the pommel under your right knee; sit well
towards the right, square your shoulders, force your elbows well
down, hollow your waist a little, and start. He won't go? Of
course he will not, until bidden to do so, if he know his
business. Bend forward the least bit in the world, draw very
slightly on the reins, and rather harder on the right, so as to
turn him from the stand, and away he walks, and you are in the
ring. You had no idea that it was so large, and you feel as if
lost on a western prairie, but you are in no danger whatsoever.
You cannot fall off while your right knee and left foot are in
place, and if you deliberately threw yourself into the tan, you
would be unhurt, and the riding-school horse knows better than to
tread on anything unusual which he may find in his way.
Now, Esmeralda, keep your mind--No, your saddle is not turning;
it is well girthed. You feel as if it were? Pray, how do you know
how you would feel if a saddle were to turn? Did you ever try it?
And your saddle is not too large! Neither is it too small! And
there is nothing at all the matter with your horse! Now,
Esmeralda, keep your mind--No, that other girl is not going to
ride you down. Her horse would not allow her, if she endeavored
to do so. The trouble is that she does not guide her horse, but
is worrying herself about staying on his back, when she should be
thinking about making him turn sharp corners and go straight
forward. Regard her as a warning, Esmeralda, and keep your mind--
What is the matter with the reins? Apparently they are oiled,
for they have slipped from under your thumbs, and your horse is
wandering along with drooping head, looking as if training to
play the part of the dead warrior's charger at a military
funeral.
Shorten your reins now, carefully! Not quite so much, or your
horse will think that you intend to begin to trot, and do not
lean backward, or he will fancy that you wish him to back or
stop. The poor thing has to guess at what a pupil wishes, and no
wonder that he sometimes mistakes.
But, Esmeralda, keep your mind on those thumbs and hold them
close to your forefingers. Driving will give no idea of the
slipperiness of leather, but after your first riding lesson you
will wonder why it is not used to floor roller-skating rinks. But
remember that your reins are for your horse's support, not for
yours; they are the telegraph wires along which you send
dispatches to him, not parallel bars upon which your weight is to
depend. Hitherto, you have not ridden an inch. Your horse has
strolled about, and you have not dropped from his back, and that
is not riding, but now you shall begin.
In a large ring, pupils are required to keep to the wall when
walking, as this gives the horse a certain guide, but in small
rings the rule is to keep to the wall when trotting, so as to
improve every foot of pace, and to walk about six feet from the
wall, not in a circle, but describing a rectangle. New pupils are
always taught to turn to the right, and to make all their
movements in that direction. Hold your thumbs firmly in place,
and draw your right hand a very little upward and inward,
touching your whip lightly to the horse's right side, and turning
your face and leaning your body slightly to the right.
The instant that the corner is turned, drop your hand, keeping
the thumb in place, square your shoulders, look straight between
your horse's ears, and then allow your eyes to range upward as
far as possible without losing sight of him altogether. No matter
what is going on about you. Very likely, the criticizing mamma on
the mounting-stand is scolding sharply about noting. Possibly, a
dear little boy is fairly flying about the ring on a pony that
seems to have cantered out of a fairy tale, and a marvelously
graceful girl, whom you envy with your whole soul, is doing
pirouettes in the centre of the ring.
All that is not your business. Your sole concern is to keep your
body in position, and your mind fixed on making your horse obey
you, doing nothing of his own will. Stop him now and then by
leaning back, and drawing on the reins, not with your body but
with your hands. Then lean forward and go on, but if he should
remain planted as fast as the Great Pyramid, if when started he
should refuse to pay any attention to the little taps of your
left heel and the touches of your whip, nay, if he should lie
down and pretend to die, like a trick horse in a circus, don't
cluck. No good riding master will teach a pupil to cluck or will
permit the practice to pass unreproved, and riding-school horses
do not understand it, and are quite as likely to start at the
cluck of a rider on the other side of the ring as they are when a
similar noise is made by the person on their own backs.
But now, just as you have shortened your reins for the fortieth
time or so, your master rides up beside you. You told him of your
little three-lesson plan, and being wise in his generation, he
smilingly assented to it. "Shall we trot?" he asks, in an
agreeable voice. "Shorten your reins, now! Don't pull on them!
Right shoulder back! Now rise from the saddle as I count, 'One,
two, three, four!' Off we go!'" You would like to know what he
meant by "off!" "Off," indeed! You thought you were "off" the
saddle. You have been bounced up and down mercilessly, and have
gasped, "Stop him!" before you have been twice around the ring,
and not one corner have you been able to turn properly. As for
your elbows, you know that they have been flying all abroad, but
still--it was fun, and you would like to try again. You do try
again, and you would like to try again. You do try again, and, at
last, you are conscious of a sudden feeling of elasticity, of
sympathy with your horse, of rising when he does, and then your
master looks at you triumphantly, and says: "You rose that time,"
and leaves you to go to some other pupil. And then you walk your
horse again, trying to keep in position, and you make furtive
little essays at trotting by yourself, and find that you cannot
keep your horse to the wall, although you pull your hardest at
his left rein, the reason being that, unconsciously, you also
pull at the right rein, and that he calmly obeys what the reins
tell him and goes straight forward. Then your master offers to
help you by lifting you, grasping your right arm with his left
hand, and you make one or two more circuits of the ring, and then
the hour is over and you dismount and go to the dressing-room.
Tired, Esmeralda? A little, and you do wonder whether you shall
not be a bruised piece of humanity to-morrow. Not if your flesh
be as hard as any girl's should be in these days of gymnasiums,
but if you have managed to bruise a muscle or to strain one, lay
a bottle of hot water against it when you go to bed and it will
not be painful in the morning. If, in spite of warnings, you have
been so careless about your underclothing as to cause a blister,
a bit of muslin saturated with Vaseline, with a drop of tincture
of benzoin rubbed into it, makes a plaster which will end the
smart instantly.
This is not a physician's prescription, but is hat of a horseman
who for years led the best riding class in Boston, and it is
asserted that nobody was ever known to be dissatisfied with its
effects. Muffle yourself warmly, Esmeralda, and hasten home, for
nothing is easier than to catch cold after riding. Air your frock
and cloak before an open fire to volatilize the slight ammoniacal
scent which they must inevitably contract in the locker, and then
be as good to yourself as the hostler will be to your poor horse.
That is to say, give yourself a sponge bath in hot water, with a
dash of Sarg's soap and almond meal in it, rubbing dry with a
Turkish towel, and then dress and go down to dinner.
Looking at your glowing face and shining eyes, your father will
tell your mother that she should have gone also, but when he
marks the havoc which you make with the substantial part of the
meal, and sees that your appetite for dessert is twice as good as
usual, he will reflect upon his butcher's and grocer's bills,
and, considering what they would be with provision to make for
two such voracious creatures, he will say, "No, Esmeralda, don't
take your mother!"