Passing through these institutions, the young European enters the military school with as little thought of disputing any order which may be given him as of arguing with the priest who states a theological truth from the pulpit.  And, indeed, had he been reared under the tutelage of one of those modern silver-tongued American pedagogues, who make gentle requests lest they should elicit antagonism by commands, the military school should soon completely alter the complexion of his ideas, for he would find his failures in the execution of orders treated as disobedience.  He would not be punished at first, it is true, but pretty theories that he was nervous, or ill, or the victim of hereditary disability, or of fibre too delicately attenuated to perform any required act, would not be admitted except, indeed, as a reason for expulsion.  Moreover, the tests to which he would be compelled to submit before this escape from discipline lay open to him, would be neither slight nor easily borne, for the European military teacher has yet to learn the existence of that exquisite personal dignity which is hopelessly blighted by corporal punishment or infractions of discipline.

“Will you teach me how to ride, sir?” asked a Boston man of a Hungarian soldier, one of the pioneers among Boston instructors.

“Will I teach you!  Eh!  I don’t know,” said the exile dolefully, for during his few weeks in the city, he had seen something of the ways of the American who fancies himself desirous of being taught.  “Perhaps you will learn, but will—­I—­teach—­you?  You can ride?”

“A little.”

“Very well!  Mount that horse, and ride around the ring.”

Away went the pupil, doing his best, but before he had traversed two sides of the school, the master shouted to the horse, and the pupil was sitting in the tan.  He picked himself up, and returned to the mounting-stand, saying:  “Will you tell me how to stay on next time?”

“I will,” cried the Hungarian in a small ecstasy; “and I will make a rider of you!” And he did, too, and certainly took as much pleasure in his pupil in the long course of instruction which followed, and in the resultant proficiency.

In European riding-schools for ladies, there is, of course, no resort to corporal punishment, but there is none of that careful abstention from telling disagreeable truths which popular ignorance extracts from American teachers in all schools, except in the military and naval academies.  Indeed, the need of it is hardly felt, for that peculiar self-consciousness which makes an American awkward under observation and restive under reproof is scarcely found in countries not democratic, and the “I’m ez good ez you be” feeling that is at the bottom of American intractability, has no chance to flourish in lands where position is a matter of birth and not of self-assertion.