To repeat, therefore, the young woman who wants to look pretty should confine her exercise to dancing.  She can also hold a parasol over her head and sit in a canoe—­or she can be pretty how and where she will, so long as it is not on a horse in the park or hunting-field. (To mention hunting-field is superfluous; the woman who can ride well enough to follow the hounds is too good a sportswoman, too great a lover of good form to be ignorant of the proper outline necessary to smartness of appearance in the saddle.)

In smartest English society it is not considered best form for a young girl to ride astride in the hunting-field or in the park after she is grown.  A high-born English girl rides astride as a child, but as soon as she is old enough to be presented at Court, she appears at a Meet or in the “Row” in a lady’s habit, trigly perfect in fit, and on a side-saddle.  In America this is an extreme opinion, and it is only among the most fashionable that a young girl having all her life ridden in a man’s saddle, finds the world a joyless place and parents cruel when she is no longer allowed to ride like a boy.  But she becomes, in spite of her protests, “another who looks divine on a horse.”  And you can look divine too, if you choose!  On second thoughts the adjective must be qualified.  No one looks divine on a horse who is not thin as a shingle.  But since diet produces a shingle shape and every one strong-minded (or vain) enough, can diet, you need only care enough to “count your calories” and be as slim as you please.

Next, the best habit possible.  And best habits are expensive, and there are no “second best.”  A habit is good or it is bad.  Whatever the present fashion may be, have your habit utterly conventional.  Don’t wear checks or have slant pockets, or eccentric cuffs or lapels; don’t have the waist pinched in.  Choose a plain dark or “dust” color.  A night blue that has a few white hairs in the mixture does not show dust as much as a solid dark color, and a medium weight close material holds its shape better than a light loose weave.

You may wear a single white carnation or a few violets in your buttonhole—­but no other trimming.  Keep the idea of perfect clothes for men in mind, get nothing that the smartest man would not wear, and you can’t go wrong.  Get boots like those of a man, low-heeled and with a straight line from heel to back of top.  Don’t have the tops wider than absolutely necessary not to bind, and don’t have them curved or fancy in shape.  Be sure that there is no elbow sticking out like a horse’s hock at the back of the boot, and don’t have a corner on the inside edge of the sole.  And don’t try to wear a small size!

=WHEN YOU PUT YOUR HABIT ON=

First, hair:  Never mind if you look like Mme. Recamier with your hair fluffed and like a skinned rabbit with it tight back, tight, flat back it must go.  Brush it smooth as you can, braid it or coil it about level with the top of your ears and wind it in a door mat, not a knob in the back.