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 as rigid as bronze.  “I ride here, sir,” was the grim answer, with another tap on the forehead.

And first, Esmeralda, being feminine, you wish to know what you are to wear.

Until you have taken at least ten lessons, it would be simply foolishness for you to buy any special thing to wear, except a plain flannel skirt, the material for which should not cost you more than two dollars and a half.  Harper’s Bazar has published two or three patterns, following which any dressmaker can make a skirt quite good enough for the ring.  A jersey, a Norfolk jacket, a simple street jacket or even an ordinary basque waist; any small, close-fitting hat, securely pinned to your hair, and very loose gloves will complete a dress quite suitable for private lessons, and not so expensive that you need grudge the swift destruction certain to come to all equestrian costumes.  Nothing is more ludicrous than to see a rider clothed in a correct habit, properly scant and unhemmed, to avoid all risks when taking fences and hedges in a hunting country, with her chimney-pot hat and her own gold-mounted crop, her knowing little riding-boots and buckskins, with outfit enough for Baby Blake and Di Vernon and Lady Gay Spanker, and to see that young woman dancing in the saddle, now here and now there, pulling at the reins in a manner to make a rocking-horse rear, and squealing tearfully and jerkily:  “Oh, ho-ho-oh, wh-h-hat m-m-makes h-h-him g-g-go s-s-s-so?”