“There is a better way of dong it, but that is enough for to-day.  Walk now.  Do you see how much better your horse carries himself, and how much better you carry your hands, after those little exercises?  Now you must try and imagine yourself doing them over and over and over again, to accustom your mind to them, just as when learning to play scales and five-finger exercises you used to think them out while walking.  Shall you not need pictures and diagrams to assist you?  Not if you have as much imagination as any horsewoman should have.  Not if you have enough imagination to manage a cow, much more to enter into the feelings of a good horse.  Pictures are invaluable to the stupid; they benumb and enervate the clever, and turn them into apish imitators, instead of making them able to act from their own knowledge and volition.  Theory will not make you a good rider, but a really good rider without theory is an impossibility, and your theory must have a deeper seat than your retinae.  Now, you shall have a very little trot, and then you may walk for ten minutes, and try to do voltes and half voltes by yourself, asking me for aid if you cannot remember how to execute the movements.  Doing them will help you to pass away the time when you are too tired to trot, and will keep you from having any dull moments.”

And you, Esmeralda, you naughty girl!  You forgot all about your sulkiness half an hour ago, and, looking your master in the face, you say:  “But nobody ever has dull moments in riding-school.”  There!  Finish your lesson and walk off to the dressing-room; you will be trying to trade horses with somebody the next thing, you artful, flattering puss!

VII.

Here we are riding, she and I!
Browning.

What is it now, Esmeralda?  By your blushing and stammering it is fairly evident that another of your devices for learning on the American plan—­that is to say, by not studying—­is in full possession of your fancy, and that again you expect to become a horsewoman by a miracle; come, what is it?  A music ride?  Nell has an acquaintance who always rides to music, and asserts that it is as easy as dancing; that the music “fairly lifts you out of the saddle,” and that the pleasure of equestrian exercise is doubled when it is done to the sound of the flute, violin, and bassoon, or whatever may be the riding-school substitutes?

As for lifting you out of the saddle, Esmeralda, it is quite possible that music might execute that feat, promptly and neatly, once, and might leave you out, were it produced suddenly and unexpectedly by “dot leetle Sherman bad,” and it is undoubtedly true that, were you a rider, music would exhilarate you, quicken your motions, stimulate your nerves, and assist you as it assists a soldier when marching.  It is also true that it will aid even you somewhat, by indicating on what step you should rise, so that your motions will not alternate with those of your horse,